William Carew Hazlitt

The Question of Condition considered More at Large—How One most Forcibly Realises Its Importance and Value—Limited Survival of Ancient Coins in Fine State—Practical Tests at Home and Abroad—Lower Standard in Public Institutions and the Cause—Only Three Collectors on My Lines besides Myself—The Romance of the Shepherd Sale—Its Confirmation of My Views—Small Proportion of Genuine Amateurs in the Coin-Market—Fastidious Buyers not very Serviceable to the Trade—An Anecdote by the Way—The Eye for State more Educated in England than Abroad—American Feeling and Culture—What will Rare Old Coins bring, when the Knowledge of Them is more developed?—The Ladies stop the Way—Continental Indifference to Condition—Difficulties attendant on Ordering from Foreign Catalogues—Contrast between Them and Our Own—D’une BeautÉ Excessive—Condition a Relative Term—Its Dependence on Circumstances—Words of Counsel—Final Conclusions—Do I regret having become a Collector?—My Mistakes.

Condition, with the majority of coin-collectors, does not rule at all. A man wants a particular piece for the sake of study or of possession; and so long as the type is there, he is satisfied. That is the general religion of amateurs.

With a second section this quality becomes a merit; if the coin is a good one, so much the better, if it is not too dear. With half-a-dozen perchance in each generation, if with so many, the state is a postulate; the purchaser of the item depends on that above everything else; and the price is secondary.

I have known very few persons in my time, who seemed thoroughly to understand what a fine coin was. It is not sufficient that it is well-preserved or even fleur de coin; for it may have been badly struck, or it may be damaged by a flaw or by the cleaner. It should be well struck, perfectly preserved, and unsophisticated. If there is a tone or patina, that should be pure and uniform.

The value and force of condition in coins are not fully recognisable, till one is fortunate enough to accumulate a body similar in style and rank. In a collection of first-rate examples each new-comer enhances the rest, and is enhanced by them, and the converse is true of the presence of inferior productions, which demoralise and deteriorate their companions. It seemed to me that this was signally demonstrated, where at Sotheby’s rooms a ten-shilling piece in silver of the Oxford Declaration type, 1643, occurred among an assortment of poor material, and brought £14. It was in mint-state, and in a sale with others of similar stamp would have doubtless attracted wider attention, and commanded at all events twice the money. I exchanged it with Lincoln for an indifferent one in my possession, which had cost me five guineas, and for which he allowed me eight, so that it came to me at about ten per cent. on the auction price.

My undeviating experience is that the survival of really fine old coins, except in the Greek and Roman series, where continual finds operate to shake values, so far as all but the Roman first brass and the Greek copper are concerned, is very small. I have repeatedly put this point to a practical test. Mr Whelan once overhauled on my behalf at Paris some 3000 coins, and brought over with him sixteen, of which I rejected eight. Messrs Lincoln & Son several years since placed on view about 2000 Greek silver pieces; of course many were duplicate specimens; but I failed to discover more than about a score within my rather exacting and trying lines. At the sale of the United Service Institution in 1895 there were fully 3000 copper coins; from these thirty or so were selected as likely to suit me; and I reduced the number on a final scrutiny to half. When the Boyne cabinet of old continental money was offered for sale, the series being so peculiarly on my lines, I carefully marked the catalogue, and in due course examined the collection. There were by estimation 25,000 pieces, more or less; it was a heavy task; but my object was numismatic as well as commercial. I aimed at taking notes no less than at venturing on a few purchases; and I found the same thing. The items had been over-described as regarded condition; and I could not see more than twenty or thirty, which were likely to be of advantage to me in augmenting my small gathering without detriment to the prevailing quality. Even in the Montagu sales of Greek silver, where such high prices ruled, and of which so much was made in the papers, the proportion of first-rate pieces was inconsiderable. I went through the whole; and the apology tendered by the exhibitor before the auction was that many of them were so rare.

This plea may hold very good for a public repository like the British Museum, which is supposed to possess an example of every existing piece of ancient currency (by the way, it by no means does); but I maintain that it is no argument for a private collector, unless it happens that he is closely studying a particular section of numismatics. Under ordinary circumstances, the coin, and for that matter the medal also, is to be treated as a work of art or as a curiosity by its owner or seeker, and it appears to be inconsistent with the nature of the case to amass a huge assemblage of numismatic monuments, which are not required for use, and which are not suitable as ornaments or chefs d’oeuvre.

The prevailing standard in our own and in foreign public institutions is not usually high, because they have been largely indebted to gifts and legacies in days when preservation was not even so much regarded as at present. I am persuaded that a fine sense of the constituent features of a good coin has always been, and remains, a signal exception to the general rule.

I cannot remember in the course of the eighteen years, which I have dedicated in partial measure to these interesting objects of inquiry and regard, more than three instances, in which my beau ideal of a cabinet has been fulfilled. But I must be careful not to omit to note that I did not see the Montagu collection of English coins so largely derived from those of Mr Addington and Mr Bryce. The cases, to which I refer, were those of Mr Lake Price, Mr Shepherd and Mr Rostron, who observed the principle recommended by me, and carried out most scrupulously in my own selection. The result in all instances was that high, and even extraordinary, prices were obtained. The quality was uniform; there was bona fides; and the names helped. There was, of course, nothing strange or singular in the realisation of £255 for a half George noble of Henry VIII.; but what illustrated, as well as any example, the force of a favourable prejudice, was the advance of a shilling of Charles II. of 1673 (a common date) to £11, because it was marvellously fine, and was in that atmosphere. I procured an exact duplicate the same day for 14s. The Shepherd cabinet was remarkable for beautifully struck Anglo-Norman halfpennies and farthings in silver, some of them of the highest rarity, if not unique; and, then, Mr Montagu was in the field. Everything concurred to render the Shepherd affair a great success.

I had not waited for this notable event (it took place in 1885) to come to the conclusion, that quality was to be preferred to quantity. At an early stage in my numismatic career, I began to follow exactly the same rule at a distance—that is, so far as my resources would allow me; and I vexed the spirit of one at least of the firms, with which I chiefly dealt, by making it the shoot for my inferior duplicates. I must in this way have weeded my trays of hundreds of pieces, which satisfied me at the outset, tolerably fastidious as I was; and I feel the relief and the benefit.

But how completely a hobby of this or any other kind, when it is pursued as a serious business, engrosses time and attention, and becomes part of one’s life—perchance the greater part, I did not realise for some time after my entrance into the arena, or I should have hesitated to proceed. A sensible proportion—almost a preponderant one—of collectors resemble windfalls; they never arrive at maturity; they commit mistakes, which dishearten them, or they discover the hopeless magnitude of the scheme, and abandon it after a season or two, nay, after a single transaction, over which they chew the cud, with the result that the lot returns to the vendor at a reduced figure.The members of the trade are fully aware, that those who are genuine amateurs, and who never swerve from their undertaking during life, may be counted on the fingers. The bookseller may have a large number of customers; but he lives by a very small one; and it is so with all dealers in luxuries and fancies.

The student of condition in coins and medals is by no means the frequenter of his premises, whom the numismatic expert most delights to see, although he may be of the private opinion, that his policy is the right one, for he is necessarily a difficult person to suit and to please; the man, who wants the coin, so long as it is authentic and legible, is the more welcome visitor. He acquires at lower quotations; yet the attendant profit to the vendor is probably more, because for mediocre property the competition is so much less severe. Of all clients in the world, those, who are content to take examples otherwise with no future before them but the crucible, are the most valuable; they deserve to be bowed in and out. The rare phenomenon, who knows more than the master of the shop, and touches nothing but what the foreigner calls pijoux, is a questionable god-send, for he has too keen a nose for rarities, and only carries away what is sure money and has no determinable value.

A vexatious incident happened to a leading house in this sort of way. Doubtless every dealer has had his experience of letting prizes go without being aware of it; and it is a distasteful aggravation of the annoyance to notify a great bargain to the party concerned. In a window in New Oxford Street the story goes, that a foreign silver coin was exhibited for sale, the price 15s. A gentleman of continental origin went in, and asked to see it. ‘Was that the lowest price?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Ah! well, it was a nice coin, but rather dear. Say twelve shillings. No, fifteen it must be.’ But the proposed buyer continued to look at the piece, and to lament the impossibility of securing it at so high a tariff, till the owner, impatient at the loss of his time, agreed to accept the reduction. Our friend put his purchase in his pocket, and laid down the amount and then, as he turned to leave the shop, he held up his finger, and with a pleasant smile observed, ‘That co-in worth one hundred pound.’

The feelings of the victim were probably homicidal. He scarcely forgave me, I fear, for purchasing for £3, 10s. a very fine thaler of Wallenstein, 1632, of which an inferior example just afterward realised a far higher figure, but which was itself one in a lot sold under the hammer for £1, 14s. It is true that it was badly catalogued.

The English dealers have certainly a superior eye to those abroad for what I term state. There may not be many, who lay so great a stress on this aspect of the matter as those, whose collections realised in consequence abnormal prices, and enjoy a classical celebrity; but the mean average among us is, no doubt, higher than it is either in America or on the Continent.

The American Coin-market is in a totally different stage of development from that in Books; our transatlantic cousins have not that local and technical experience so essential in the study of numismatics; and they can scarcely be said to compete seriously so far for the rarer and more important objects. They have in the course of the last fifty years made very considerable progress, as we all know, in literary antiquities and in works of art. But the coin and medal have their turn to come. There is not, perhaps, any one living, who will witness the vast revolution in prices, when the wealthier citizens of the United States become our rivals for what is finest and scarcest in this remaining field.

One obstacle in the way of coins coming to the front is the inherent necessity for keeping them out of view; they are not so showy as pictures, china, furniture, or even books; and they demand on the part of an amateur, desirous of accomplishing equally satisfactory results, a larger amount of study and caution. The ladies frequently influence these things: they prefer ornaments, which set off their salons and corridors to advantage; and the numismatist meets with discouragement, unless he is unusually resolute or impassioned. Nay, it is so in the old country, where tradition looks farther back, and is more deeply rooted; and the dealer never cares to see a client enter, accompanied by his wife or daughter. They operate as refrigerators.

On the Continent with its past infinitely remote, and with its immense area abounding with centres of culture and inquiry, the general feeling for high preservation in coins is certainly not so pronounced as among ourselves. Setting aside, as mere commercial parlance, the phrases employed by the foreign houses to denote condition, collectors themselves are comparatively insensible or indifferent to the matter. I have had frequent occasion to return with a feeling of disappointment specimens sent me on approval from abroad, and even purchased on commission, where my agent was the cataloguer, and in my judgment misdescribed the lot; and a new snare has been prepared for the unwary in the form of illustrated lists, where, if you select an item which has been engraved, the auctioneer seeks to hold you to your bargain on the plea that you have had an opportunity of seeing the coin in the plate. But the fact is that the coin and the representation of it even by some photographic process are not necessarily identical, and I should recommend any amateur giving his orders to a continental establishment to ignore the illustrations as tests or criteria. Several articles in a Paris sale, which appeared very fair in the letterpress account and in the planches accompanying it, came over to me; and I peremptorily refused to take them as being at variance with the catalogue, to which the agent stood at once in the relation of compiler and owner.

The foreign houses court English support, and although they are fully aware that their clients at a distance wholly depend on trustworthy descriptions, they habitually misrepresent the circumstances, and expect the buyer to bear the brunt of their want of care or faith.

On the other hand, the neglect to convey the full or exact truth may often arise from ignorance or absence of taste and judgment. For I have observed the relative valuation of poor, tolerable, fine, and superb examples of a particular coin in the hands of this or that dealer. An English house would be glad to get rid of the former two categories at any figure, or would melt them; the third he would expect to reimburse him for the first and second; and the fleur de coin or proof he would hardly know how to estimate too highly. His foreign contemporary acts very differently; he has a scale, it is true; but between the worst and the best the financial distance is surprisingly small. For a distinctly bad example he asks you a franc, for a finer one, two, for a really first-rate specimen, four, and for a proof, six. In the case of one of the English sources of supply, the difference would be, that for the fine piece you would have to pay ten francs or their equivalent and for the proof not impossibly five-and-twenty.

This corroborates my statement, inasmuch as it shews that condition does not form so influential a factor abroad in determining values, as it does at home. The ‘numismatiste et antiquaire’ complacently schedules his property as assez beau, beau, trÈs beau; all these notations are practically worthless; the experienced buyer knows beforehand what he will get, if he sends for the items; and it is wise to limit oneself to such prodigies of excellence as are shadowed under the terms f.d.c., superbe, and d’une beautÉ excessive. When you receive your parcel, you find that you have what Lincoln or Spink would offer as a fine coin. Schulman of Amersfoort had my commission in the sale of the local find a year or so since to obtain for me a gold zecchino of Ercole I., Duke of Ferrara, which the aforesaid averred to be ‘d’une beautÉ excessive;’ but a representative of the British Museum attended in person, and bought it over me. I afterward examined it in Great Russell Street, was very glad that I had missed it, and procured a better one in the Boyne sale for less money.

Condition is, after all, a relative term. It depends, 1. on the metal; 2. on the fabric. Gold and electrum are subject to ordinary wear and tear in common with the inferior materials used for coinage, and are more liable to clipping and sweating for the sake of the intrinsic value; but these products do not suffer corrosion; the only superficial injury which is noticeable has arisen from their deposit in certain soils, as in the sand of Egypt, where the effect is to blister or speckle the surface. The Russian platinum series appears to be sensitive to nothing but friction and use, and as it has not been an ordinary circulating medium, it occurs as a rule unworn.

As regards the lower metals, silver, copper, lead and tin, the money struck in these naturally follows the laws, to which they submit; but it also exhibits the results of imperfect preparation and alloy. The finer the silver, the less difficult it becomes to procure specimens in a satisfactory state; but scarcely any are exempt from oxidisation, which is apt in course of time to destroy the surface and the type. A peculiar tarnish, which it is not easy to remove, is found on particular coins—for example, shillings and sixpences of George III. 1816—and in metal of low standard an expectation of improvement from cleaning processes is generally illusory. The presence of chemical decomposition in copper, lead or tin pieces ought to be sufficient to deter the fastidious collector from entertaining them as purchases. Copper is heir to all sorts of ills: verdegris, rust, corrosion, and blisters, and where the defect has been of long duration, there is no really effectual remedy, as the recognised appliances may not succeed or, which is almost worse, may succeed only in part.

Then, secondly, the circumstances of issue, as in obsidional pieces and other money of necessity, have been so hurried and incomplete, that the discovery of a faultless specimen is impossible, and it is for the seeker to decide whether he will tolerate a flaw, which is inseparable from the acquisition, or dispense with it. I do not of course allude to the vendor’s expression, ‘fine for the coin,’ but to certain cases, where a real difficulty exists in every series, especially where billon prevails in currencies.

So much depends, first, on the skill or care, with which the amalgam was originally made, and, again, on the subsequent treatment of the example in passing from hand to hand. The coating of white solution in the older pieces has almost invariably disappeared; it is something, if the type is irreproachable.

There is a perpetual confusion in the catalogues between copper and mixed metal from the failure of the plating operation; but the value is an almost sure clue. For this reason the 12-grossi piece or fiorino of Monaco, 1640, should not have been sold in the Boyne auction, 1896, as copper. But certainly the cataloguer misinterpreted the G. xii. on the piece into 12 grana. That august Government was not in the habit of giving four shillings for sixpence. These plated currencies are a terrible plague to the numismatist, as 99 specimens out of 100 have parted with their white coats.

Where a really valuable and important coin is concerned, it is a subject for careful deliberation, whether it is best to let it pass, to keep it as it is, or to restore it. If the foreign matter is merely a loose incrustation or stratum, there is no great uncertainty or danger; where the mischief is more deeply seated, the risk of failure grows fearfully. I have a silver crown of Queen Elizabeth in almost perfect state, but as black as ink; I shrink from touching it. I applied ammonia to a first brass of one of the Roman emperors, and spoiled it, although the dirt seemed to be recent and tractable. A testone of one of the Medici of Florence was perfectly discoloured and disfigured; the most simple of all remedies acted like an enchantment; it emerged fleur de coin; and whatever objection may be said to exist to these experiments, the forbearance from employing chemicals, and the natural action of the atmosphere, gradually bring back the tone and the age.

Where one is able to meet with early billon money, which has miraculously escaped all deteriorating agencies, it is a real pleasure to contemplate the mixture of bloom and patina, which time has lent to a piece. But this can hardly occur, unless the proportion of fine metal is sensible.

In the Greek and Roman series, as well as in those of more modern days, there are various forms of deception and danger, against which I have had occasion to guard. Of course no one, who is out of leading strings, buys a Roman first or second brass, which has been polished with brick-dust, a lot which had befallen an entire cabinet sold at an auction within my remembrance. But there are less obvious sources of degradation due to various causes and motives, amongst which tooling for the purpose of creating an artificial bloom or patina, and plugging in order to disguise a bore or piercing, are the most usual.

The strangest feature about sophistication and forgery seems to be the elaborate trouble, which it must have cost to spoil a genuine coin or to fabricate a false one, where the original in good state is not difficult to procure. This may be ascribed to perverted ingenuity; but it is literally vain to attempt to trace to their parentage these phenomena. The systematic manufacture of Roman money is more understandable, because it flourished just when that money was most eagerly sought.

After all, the perils which beset the path of the collector, lend a fillip to the pursuit. Were there not such occasional contingencies, a career would be really deficient in anecdote and excitement, just as, without its rocks, quicksands, and sharks the sea would be less adventurous and less interesting.

I have personally come, and I trust that I may have been so fortunate as to bring some of the perusers of this small book, to the threefold conclusion under all the heads which I have discussed: 1. That for all ordinary buyers for their own pleasure and instruction the Eclectic principle is the best; 2. That Condition is a primary requirement; 3. That it is thoroughly practicable for an individual of very moderate fortune by persevering study—in itself a recreation—to form an extensive and valuable assemblage of whatever description of artistic property he prefers on terms, which will secure on realisation the return of the capital with interest.

This appears to be the only aspect of the Collecting question worth considering. Wealthy men, who indulge a taste for Books, Pictures, China, Coins, or Plate, do not commonly sympathise with the poorer sort, who have to deliberate over a heavier purchase, and to wait years, perhaps, for a dearly-coveted acquisition; and I pique myself a little on having achieved under serious drawbacks a creditable degree of success in the matter of Coins. If I had attempted the same task in other directions—almost in any other direction, I should have failed, inasmuch as books, pictures, plate, and china of an equal or parallel quality go too few to the £1000 to have suited me; and even postage stamps are in an unreachable altitude for a different reason—it is one of the enterprises, where exhaustive treatment seems to be an essential feature in the programme; while the interest is serial and concrete, rather than individual. One misses the perspective, the art, the sentiment, so omnipresent in genuine antiquities. As a sort of grown-up child’s hobby-horse it might be well enough, I thought; but when it acquires its own literature and Society, and, before you can see completeness in the near distance, locks up the purchase-money of a considerable estate, that fantasy and myself take different turnings. So that the Coin, rather even than the Book—not looking, of course, at the practical side—is the most manageable species of property, for supposing outlay to be a governing principle, all the other classes of objects of art are more or less vertu; and certain books have of late become so through the entrance into the field of the Fortunatus type of bibliophile.

The diversity of paths is wonderfully great, whether the means of acquisition are abundant or scanty; and for either contingency, as regards extent, there is a plea and a defence. The man, who possesses a miniature cabinet with a few hundred samples is apt to wax tired of surveying his property, even if they are all favourites with little histories of their own; and his friends share his tendency to indifference and defection. On the contrary, when the collection is very extensive and constantly growing, the personal attachment is transferred to the newest comers. It is like the mother with her last child; and the owner of a really large assemblage of coins resembles that of a great estate, who does not see portions of it from year’s end to year’s end. He occupies a parallel position to the master of a grand library, and is a curator with the power of sale rather than a proprietor and an intimate.

My personal tastes are fairly steadfast, and I have never been enabled to soar into the regions, where some of my distinguished and opulent acquaintances, such as Captain P—— and Lord G——, disburse more in a twelvemonth than I have done in a lifetime. But I have been truer on the other hand, to the plan, with which I set out. I felt certain that I should have to exercise a great deal of self-restraint and self-denial; I turned away with a sigh from many a prize, which might have been mine; and there has been this recompense—if it is one—that I have seen those coveted objects change hands more than once in several cases, while I pursue year after year—nay, decade after decade—my humbler programme and flight, till ultimately I may perhaps succeed, just as I am making my bow, in the part of the tortoise in the fable.

Some people are supremely happy without books, except the Family Bible, the London Directory, Bradshaw, and a handful of cheap printed paper in book-form, without china, without coins, without anything except tables and chairs. Do I wish I were as these? Not, as I now look at life, but perhaps, if I had, like them, been an eight-days’ puppy-dog—then, well, yes. One of the Huths, with whom I was debating this point, agreed with me that tables and chairs were very excellent things, but something more was to be desired, to be cultivated, if possible. But it is as human to go to extremes, as it is to err in other ways; and some men (I know one myself) make what ought to be the secondary consideration the first. I do not mean that I sit on the floor, and eat my food with my fingers; but the little additamenta to a home preponderate and overflow somewhat; one must take warning in time from gentlemen, one’s predecessors, who at last could barely find their tables and chairs.

Seeing that I have been up and down the market during a decently long succession of years, I am perhaps entitled to pay myself a few compliments on the singular rarity of occasions, which have found me on the losing and victimised side. Thrice have I suffered for my sins; for it was always my own fault. I handled things, which I did not understand; it is an error, against which I should urge every one to guard most strenuously. If you engage in the purchase of a strange commodity lying outside your own experience, it is marvellous in how many a way you are liable to the trumper. It is provoking to note the studious politeness, the almost brotherly interest, with which your friends will point out to you your sad mistake, when you have made it. For mysteries, to which you lack the key, noli tangere is the maxim. There are plenty of objects always in the market, which are fair to the eye, but bitter in the proof. How grateful I was to the enthusiast in his teens, who, when I had wasted a five-pound note on a worm-eaten xylographic block, put down a couple of guineas for it, and left me only poorer by the difference!