The Confessions of a Collector

by William Carew Hazlitt

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.