A passion for collecting usually focusses on objects intended for a certain use. When, in time, it becomes impossible, difficult or inconvenient for these objects to perform their original function, they attract interest for their historical significance or even simply for the emotions they evoke. Therefore, collectible objects have a first life, during which they are used for their intended functional purpose, and a second life, potentially more interesting than the first, in which they form part of collections. In their first life, they perform their well-known function of medium of exchange in commercial transactions. It is evident that their first life is considerably affected by their face value: a copper coin of low face value will probably have had an extremely eventful first life within, however, a limited area, while a silver coin of mid face value will have changed hands less frequently, will have had a more placid but also more adventurous first life as regards distance travelled. Lastly, a gold coin of high face value will have had a generally uneventful first life tied to financial transactions even though, in many cases, it may have travelled considerably.

The fact that changes of hand leave no traces on coins gives free rein to the imagination regarding both these lives. However, the second life, or at least part of this, of specimens of medium/high commercial value is traced by the documentation that, at each change of hands, has become public or can be inferred from the collector’s annotations. To fully understand this phenomenon and to assess all its implications, the following two cases based on Bolaffi Aste’s numismatic activities are examined below. The first example refers to an extremely rare, particularly well-preserved Galeria Valeria Aureus put up for sale at the Bolaffi Auction of December 4/5 2014 which, from a starting price of 50,000 euros, soared to 86,000.
Galeria, daughter of Roman Emperor Diocletian and wife of Galerius Augustus of the East from 305 to 311 AD, lived in the eastern part of the Empire and, after falling into disgrace following the death of her husband, was sentenced to death by Licinius and beheaded in 315 AD at Thessaloniki, the present Greek city of Salonica. The Aureus was struck at Siscia – now Sisak (Croatia) – in 308-309 AD and its state of preservation suggests that its first life was not particular tumultuous and that it probably formed part of a large payment to a State supplier or of the salary of a high-ranking civil servant or military officer and was already accumulated as a form of wealth the first time it changed hands, subsequently disappearing from circulation.
Its second life began when it became part of the collection of Hyman Montagu (1844-1895), a London solicitor of Jewish origin specialised in bankruptcy law and an eminent numismatist of his era. After his death, the collection was entrusted to Rollin & Feuardent, the leading French numismatic auction house of the time which put it up for sale on April 20, 1896 in Paris with a catalogue that has now become a sought-after bibliographic rarity. At the sale, the Galeria Aureus, together with many others, was purchased by John Durkee, US diplomat attached to the Paris Embassy and a very high level collector. Following Durkee’s premature death at the beginning of 1898 in the wreck of the liner on which he was returning to Europe, his splendid collection was bequeathed to the Metropolitan Museum of New York. At the start of the 1970s, the Metropolitan, engaged in reorganizing its collections at that time, decided to dispose of a set of Roman and Greek coins which were entrusted to Sotheby’s to be sold. This included the Galeria Aureus whose journey we have followed from London, Paris to New York and which we now find in Zurich on November 10, 1972 in the catalogue of the sale of the Metropolitan’s Roman Aurei. The putting up for sale of the coin by Bolaffi Aste, mentioned earlier, marks the current but not definitive final stage of this journey.

Moving forward by some dozen centuries from the times of Galeria Valeria Augusta to Rome during the Papacy of Clemente VII (1523-1534), we encounter the second example of a coin with a double life. The coin in this case is a rare, splendidlypreserved Double Florin of Chamber which, at the Bolaffi auction of December 6/7 2012, soared from a starting price of 1,500 euros to 4,200 euros. Clemente VII, born Giulio Zanobi in Florence in 1478, was the natural son of Giuliano de’ Medici assassinated in the Pazzi conspiracy a month before Giulio’s birth. Lorenzo il Magnifico, Giuliano’s brother who escaped death in the same conspiracy legitimised his nephew and took him under his wing. In 1513, his cousin Giovanni de Medici, Pope with the name of Leo X, appointed him Archbishop of Florence and Cardinal, paving his way to the Roman Curia where he held numerous diplomatic appointments, also becoming one of the main protagonists of European politics in this period, until he was elected Pope. The Double Florin struck in Rome in the early years of the Papacy of Clemente VII, as can be assumed from the mint mark that appears also on the coins of Adrian VI, the previous Pope and also of the Vacancy of the Holy See between the two Popes. In view of its high face value, which tended to restrict its use in commercial transactions and its state of preservation which clearly suggests its limited use as a means of payment, we can assume that, during its first life, it was used as donativa of the Pope or of a high-ranking prelate of the Curia and, therefore, preserved as a precious memento, probably outside Rome as, otherwise, it would not have escaped the 1527 Sack of Rome.

We do not know what happened to “our” Double Florin in the centuries that have passed since the times of Clement VII; its second life is in fact documented starting from November 1962 at the sale of the XXIV Münzen und Medaillen A.G. auction of Basel, one of the most important numismatic operators of the 20th century. Together with another two subsequent sales in 1963 and 1964, this sale involved the entire collection of Dimitri Dolivo, a Swiss paediatrician and eminent numismatist who settled in Lausanne in 1920 and died in 1961. As his name clearly suggests, Dr Dolivo belonged to a family of Russian origin that had moved to Germany as the father, under suspicion for his liberal ideas, was forced into exile in 1881 following the assassination of Tsar Alexander II. Probably also due to his family origins, Dr Dolivo’s collection spanned most of European coinage, in particular the coins of Italy, to which two of the three sales are dedicated, one comprising only Pontifical coins and the other more general but with a section dedicated to the Medieval coins of Piedmont, still considered one of the most complete ever to appear at a public auction. In the fifty years between the 1962 sale and its putting up for auction at Bolaffi Aste mentioned above, the life cycle of the Double Florin continued in a major collection, important for its quality and number of coins and for the personality of the collector. As a long and interesting numismatic life increases the allure and, therefore, the commercial value of a coin, the ability to reconstruct its numismatic pedigree is one of the main competencies of an auction house. This brief overview of historical events, collections and collectors does not touch upon the coins as objects, not because this is a topic not to be discussed; on the contrary, numismatics embraces not only the study, analysis and description of coins but much more. Extending this to include tracing the various phases of the life cycle of a coin, only presumed or documented, continually opens up new horizons, brings the object to life, stimulates the imagination to recall contexts distant in time and space.

By Carlo Barzan