found me at the Lansing Coin Club show on Sunday. I did not intend to buy anything. I was there for the MSNS Board of Directors meeting. But I walked the floor... I stopped to talk with Fred Knust of First Light Numismatics in Mason, Michigan. Fred has a degree in mathematics and worked for the state of Michigan as a statistician. He grew up in Japan because his father was in the military. So, he collected Asian coins when no one else did. When I started collecting about 1993 or so, Fred sold me most of Chinese history and bit of Tibet. Fred likes ancients and has done attribution work for dealers and been associated with Eldert Bontikoe's Pegasi of Ann Arbor. Fred makes the MSNS shows and other local coin club events around and about, moreso now that he is retired. Anyway, I took one look at his trays and I could see that he had a lot of nice stuff, so after I made the rounds, I came back and took my time to see what was what and this little denaro of Genova found me.Today, I looked up some history -- online as well as in my Britannica and Americana -- found out about Conrad III (cvnradi rex says the coin). I also read about Genoa, in its time the fourth largest city in the West, right up there with Constantinople and Paris. It's not for nothing that Columbus was Genoan.
So, all in all, I was pretty happy to have been found by this coin.