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CONSERVATOR. Preserver, Protector, or Defender. This term frequently occurs on Roman coins…
S. W. Stevenson (1889) Dictionary of Roman Coins
conservatori. Latin (dative case, conservator): to the keeper, preserver, or protector. A dedication; e.g., on Roman coins IOVI CONSERVATORI (“for Jupiter, the protector”).
CONSERVATORI Ancient Coins is a new classical numismatic site from Curtis Jackson-Jacobs, including ancient coin & numismatic literature blog; other resources for the ancient coin community; and an online cabinet of coins from the Greek, Roman and Byzantine world. The inaugural print fixed-price list is in preparation and will contain about 120 coin lots (plus literature lots).
Corinth AR Stater, ca. 4th cent BC.
Exemplary of finest Classical numismatic style.
Ex-Glass Shoppe Coins (Tucson, AZ 1991) & Samuel-Jean Pozzi (1846-1918) Collection (Ars Classica I [1921], Lot 1688)
Our Mission
After a five-year hiatus from Jackson & Jacobs Family Numismatics[1], the new name expresses a new mission in the numismatic marketplace. CONSERVATORI’s mission is based on these principles:
First: We are not simply owners of coins; we are their custodians, responsible for historical objects that have survived for millennia and will greatly outlive us. Selling coins cannot simply be a commercial activity. The purpose of cataloging and selling them must be (at least partly) to document, preserve, and share information about them.
Second: Coins are are social artifacts whose meaning is shaped by their context – both historical and present.
Video available here. (My Phalanna writeup on Reddit.) Ex-Classical Numismatic Group, et al.
Third: As curators and stewards, it is our duty to preserve and develop information, and to contextualize each coin that passes through our hands. In practice, this means (1) exploring what is known about a coin’s issue and historical context, and (2) documenting an individual coin’s provenance and pedigree (history of past ownership) to the extent possible.
Fourth and finally: Our goal is to help incentivize provenance. We place a premium on coins that have been researched and have as much context attached as possible, especially documented histories of ownership and/or find provenance.
Curtis Jackson-Jacobs
PhD Sociologist; amateur (very much so) boxer; and, since late 1980s, collector of ancient coins & numismatic literature
5 January 2021
[1] The J&J Family Collection was begun in the 1980s. From 2001 to 2015, we sold coins to several thousand clients on five continents through an eBay shop, auction consignments, and VCoins storefront. Beyond fixed price sales, we held over 250 small weekly & monthly auctions on eBay (each of about 10 – 50 individual coins & group lots).
Proprietor
Memberships: American Numismatic Association (ANA Member), American Numismatic Society (ANS Associate Member), Ancient Coin Collector’s Guild (Friend of ACCG), Numismatic Bibliomania Society (NBS Member), Champaign-Urbana Coin & Currency Club (Member).
I began collecting as a child in the mid- to late-1980s, alongside my parents, acquiring many of our ancient coins while traveling together in Europe. Later, I studied sociology at the University of Wisconsin (B.S., 1999) and UCLA (Ph.D., 2009). As a graduate student living in Los Angeles, I established Jackson & Jacobs Family Numismatics in 2001, selling duplicates from the collection and “inventory” purchased specifically for resale.
At that time, the collection consisted largely of Greek silver coins. Over the next 10 to 15 years, though, I expanded it to include a much more extensive collection of Roman and Byzantine coins. Though classical numismatics was not my area of formal education, the numismatic practice was strongly informed by my background in the social sciences (beyond sociology, my studies emphasized several topics I’ve found relevant: economic theory, languages, policy and law, history of science, and research methodology – as well as ancient history; incidentally, my parents are also professional social scientists).
Beginning in the mid-2010s, JJF Numismatics paused sales for several years (due partly to declining security in regions of the Ancient Near East, where many coins first enter the market). Over the next several years I reflected on how the interests of the marketplace may intersect with those of other stakeholders in the classical numismatic community, and how dealers and collectors can do a better job of addressing political, cultural, and scholarly concerns. In 2019, I began preparing for the present venture, guided by the principles briefly outlined above. That perspective is, naturally, an evolving one. One constant, though, is the belief that collectors and others with a stake in ancient coins must strive to take one another’s concerns into account and seek areas of overlap.
We’d love to send you a free copy of our our forthcoming Print Catalog or find out how we can help you achieve your collecting goals. (You can also just request an email when it’s ready and request a copy by mail then.)