CHAPTER XVI

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, 331

Confessions of a Collector