About This File
We received a number of thoughtful replies to our editorial commentary of last month which, as promised, will not be printed here. It is ironic that we also received a letter from a reader who suggested that we should do (in the pages of The Celator) a complete buy/bid or auction sale in conjunction with some major dealer. The antithesis to this suggestion is a comment from one respondent who wrote "When I see an ad in The Celator, I assume the coin is already sold, overpriced, hard to move, or all of the above."
The consensus seems to be that readers will buy from direct sale ads, but the offerings must be cither very special coins or very good bargains. We will take your comments to heart and pass them on to our advertisers.
It's time to start assembling our Best of The Celator -1991. We thought that there would be less demand for the annual issue once we switched to magazine format - but we were happily wrong about that!
We have been experiencing an increasing number of requests for the 88, 89 and 90 editions, and actually had to do a second printing of the 1989 issue to meet the demand. Therefore, we will certainly continue the series - in the same style and format as usual. This year's edition will be out in December.
Not only have our readers become hooked on "The Best of the ..." The Numismatic Literary Guild recognized this project in their awards program for the third year in a row! We are very proud of that accomplishment and will strive to make this year's edition belief than ever.
We are also very proud of the NLG recognition bestowed upon Eri c Kondratieff (Clement F. Bailey Memorial A ward) for his Celator article about the Gemma Tiberiana, and of the selection of James Meyer's article about the Baths of Constantine as "Best Article" in the World Magazine Class. We've had a wealth of outstanding contributions that we are very grateful for and are most pleased by the number of new contributors each year.
Wc staffed a table at the Illinois State Numismatic Association convention in Peo ria recently and enjoyed meeting some collectors that we had not met before. The show circuit is really busy this month and next month, so we will be on the road a lot. Unfortunately, we can't make them all. but expect to be seeing a lot of you along the way.
You will find among the advertisements in this issue an offering from Clio's Cabinet. This is, as many of you have undoubtedly surmised, the business name of our antiquarian enterprise. Under this name we conduct a variety of activities, one of which is the publishing of The Celator. We also publish numismatic and art historical books. and do the occasional local show as a table holder. We do not publish a list of coins for sale, and we are not active retailers of coins in a practical sense. However, we found ourselves unexpectedly with an empty page this month and thought you might enjoy a listing of some ready e so/eric coins that most ancient coin dealers seldom offer.
We get a lot of peculiar looks when people see the name Clio's Cabinet - just as we did when people were first exposed to Celator. Clio, if you remember your mythology, was the Roman muse of history. You will find a representation of Clio in the series of Roman Republican denarii struck by L. Pomponius Musa. The cabinet of curiosities was a post-Renaissance mark of erudition and every "educated" person formed a cabinet of some sort. This marked the beginning of sophisticated collecting in the Western world. I like to think of Clio's Cabinet as an old leather pouch, filled with little treasures like The Celator, the Autobiography of Valentine Duval, a few antiquities, and a few Turkoman bronzes. Sharing and enjoying some of these treasures with our good friends is, and has for many years been, a real pleasure.
Some of our overseas subscribers have noted a delay in delivery recently - we hope to have that remedied soon. Costs of production and distribution are on the rise aga in and we are determined to explore every prudent option available before we pass the increase along to our customers. Sometimes this means a "try it and see " approach with new vendors. Please bear with us.
Thanks to all who wrote in this month, your comments are very much appreciated. While there don't seem to be any "hot fires" burning at the moment, we still like to hear your point of view.