Restitutor

The silvering remaining on that second one is exceptional! 😍

I cannot believe I almost forgot to post birthday wishes to my account namesake, Aurelian! It is also my sisters birthday today so I was a tad preoccupied (how lucky she is to share birthdays!) 😅 Lucius Domitius Aurelianus was the savior of the Roman Empire in the 3rd century AD. In the span of 4 years Aurelian reunified the shattered empire, divided into West, Central, and Eastern chunks after the humiliating capture of the Emperor Valerian at the hands of the great Shapur. Sadly for Valerians son and heir Gallienus, the Romans were a fickle bunch and stole away most of his inheritance, with Gaul, Britain, and the Eastern Provinces breaking away from central authority. After first dealing with unruly Germans in the central part of his empire, Aurelian marched East and engaged in a legendary military campaign against the Eastern Queen Zenobia and her general Zabdas. After defeating the forces of the East in battle at Emesa in 272, Aurelian absorbed the eastern provinces back into the empire and brought Zenobia back to Rome for a triumph (to be held after his reconquest of the West). In the West, Aurelian had an easier time than in the East as the Gallic Emperor Tetricus is alleged to have peacefully abdicated rather than face the might of Aurelian and his armies; Tetricus, smartly, saw the writing on the wall! Having thus reunified Rome, Aurelian was murdered a year later in 275 by people who I hope are suffering in Dante’s deepest circle of h-e-double hockey sticks 😂 So, in honor of one of the greatest Roman Emperors, please post you coins of Aurelian, the Unconquered Restorer of the World!

Feels surreal to see one of the -and likely the last remaining- great symbols of the Greatest Generation now gone. 😢

Not sure why this is the first thing I thought of but… 🤣

Hi everyone - I don’t want to weigh in yet as I do find this discussion healthy, and want to continue to hear more thoughts on this subject. Please know I have put a lot of thought and continue to put thought into how to address this, but don’t want to bias any further discussions. For now I have made a slight alteration to the specific referenced post.

Technically I had written the policy thusly, "if it comes to my attention that anyone is purposefully scamming people, and those accusations are proven, the account will be permanently banned." So, while the coins are clearly fake, it is as yet unproven whether the seller knew they were fakes and would have tried to pass them off as such. We may infer intent, but the policy technically did say 'purposefully' and so would require proof. The new added language makes it crystal clear though that any listing that contains a fake or replica will be removed, regardless of intent.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention, @thenickelguy. I have gone ahead and removed the ad; although I am not well versed in these era of coins, they do seem off. I will update The Cabinet announcement thread to be more clear about fake & replica policies. Edit: The Cabinet announcement thread original post has now been updated.

Based off your information, I think mine is a 145-147 issue since the reverse legend has AVGVSTA vs CERES. Is that a correct understanding? The auction house didn’t have any date, so for now I’ve just been saying post 141 in my description. Would be awesome to narrow in on an actual timeline vs. just sometime after she passed!

This 100%. Bidding early allows people to test your bids and usually the hammer price will be higher than if you just wait till near the end. I’ll never start bidding more than 5 min prior to the hammer time. Especially now that some auction houses reset the timer for an extra few seconds to prevent sniping. Also never bid with an odd number! You’re signaling to your competitors that they've hit your max bid.

Kindred meeting-hating spirits, unite! Haha. Love this idea for a thread. Here’s Hadrian meeting Felicitas: Hadrians expression on the obverse mirrors mine when a call runs over 😤 We could all use a little Felicitas during our meetings 🤣 Most of my other “meeting” coins I have yet to format, maybe I’ll get on that during my next meeting tomorrow 🤔😄

And six barrels of ice! 😉 That coin is spectacular, I had no idea Romans made coins like that lol. Definitely going to add it to my “must acquire soon” list 🤣

Good catch! Wonder if they wanted something in color to “pop” more for the image design.

That is lovely!

I must profess myself dense as well on this and it comes as quite a surprise to read it. Hopefully any concerned party would feel comfortable sending me a private message, or if they wish, to comment publicly here.

Looks like we just got the CNG feature auction release, and just wow 🤯. David at the ANA booth was not lying when he said there was something for everyone. This is gonna be a looooooooong wait to Oct 6th, to ultimately just get outbid on everything anyways 🙈 Can't imagine what it would be like to own coins like this... Will just keep drooling at the computer screen 😩

Don’t have any Diva Faustina II yet but I do have an Aeternitas of Diva Faustina I. Do we know what the circles on the belly represent?

I know I’ll probably get run outta town for this comment, lol, but this is the only reason why I like the NGC encapsulations for sestertii. When I was at the ANA, there were quite a number of wonderful sestertii for sale but nearly all of them said tooling or smoothing in the NGC description space. As someone who isn’t trained enough to spot tooling/smoothing easily, this was helpful. But with that said, I definitely would have broken the coin out of the encapsulation right then and there had I bought one of them 😂

In addition to Phil’s comment above, here is the link to a quick video I put together showing how to change the forum layout: Please let me know if this helps!

The only positive about “investment” videos is they end up fulfilling the ‘buy high sell low’ mantra that only the best investors follow 😇 I imagine any coins bought in this period for investment reasons will show up not too long after, probably for less than they were bought for! Like those meme stocks…

My personal preference would be the obverse of image 2 paired with the reverse of image 3. But that being said the detail on all 3 is incredible. Impressive camera and set up!

I'm getting a lot of set up envy from this thread! I can't even come close to competing so I'll throw my set up in just for a laugh. Here was my old set up from 2019, I think Doug referred to it as a Rube Goldberg machine 😆 I placed the coin in this insane contraption on the velvet blue object on top of the books and then put my phone facing down on the chair. The results were.... suboptimal at best lol. I've now advanced to this set up. Works a whole lot better now on account of the iPhone having a macro lens. Been extremely happy with the results of this. Easy to churn and burn photos! Some comparisons of seller photos vs. my photos: Seller: Mine: Seller: Mine: Seller: Mine: I'm not sure why sellers seem to want to tone down the toning (pun intended!). Seems odd; I find these tonings stunning!

Oh that's a great series of observations! Going to keep my eyes more peeled for details like these going forward!

Not a capta per se but here’s a Trajan showing Pax nonchalantly burning a bunch of conquered peoples weapons. She seems a little “over it” 😂 Struck in 111 so have to imagine it was to celebrate the victory over Dacia still, as Trajan didn’t go conquering in the East for another few years.

Thanks @shanxi, you beat me to it!

Great suggestions! I rolled out the ID forum this morning so you should see it now! Going to start moving more posts in there from the past. Will look into the gallery!