Jay GT4

Outstanding!

Fantastic find!  It's always great to find rarities on the cheap, especially a Domitian PONT 

 If I continued collecting Domitian, that coin may have been in my collection too! 

I kept an ex-ofrew (A. Short) PONT denarius:

IMP CAES DOMITANVS AVG PONT
Laureate head right

TR P COS VII DES VIII P P
Seat, draped, above, a winged thunderbolt placed horizontally.

Rome 81 CE

2.87g

RIC 40 (R2)

Ex-A Short Collection; Ex-Lucernae Catawiki auction May 2019;

Ascalon seems to have a very distinct style compared to the other mints in the region.

I'm glad you added so many Clay coins to your collection!  Still, the Colosseum coin is head and shoulders above the others.  Iconic coin that even a casual observer will be impressed with.  Congratulations!  They have found a great home.

My top 10 will also include many Clay coins.  It's the order that's tough.

Congratulations!  That's quite the find.  LEG IIII is very rare compared to LEG IV.  As you mentioned there are no examples in the Delos Hoard of 1905 and was missing from RBW collection. Only 3 examples ever offered by CNG.  I had the good fortune of having 2 LEG IIII denarii over the years.  I sold one and kept this one :

ANT AVG III VIR R P C
galley r. mast with banners at prow

LEG IIII
legionary eagle between two standards
3.04g
Patrae mint 32-31BC
Sear Imperator's 353; Crawford 544/16; Cohen 29

I agree with David's opinion of the last two sales.  I'm happy to have snagged 3 Flavian rarities from the Clay collection with the hope of adding a few more!

As you said David, this is what happens when you don't specialize and take someone else's word at face value.  I would say the surface is more than "somewhat tooled."

A great collection David.  As a fellow Flavian Fanatic I know how much the Colesseum coin means to you.  I think I speak for many of us when I say we value your generosity in giving your time and expertise when chasing down Flavians.

I'm glad you finally got one!  Now you can leave mine alone!😀

In all seriousness, it's a tough one to find.  It's the first one I've seen in the market since I bought mine in 2014 and I don't recall ever seeing another before that.  Congrats!

A great mule (error) 😁! Here's one that's a more common mix up, Titus and Vespasian

T CAES IMP VESP CENS
Laureate bust right

PONTIF MAXIM
Vespasian seated right on curule chair, with sceptre and branch

Rome, 73 CE
RIC 554 (R) (Vespasian) A mule with reverse type of Vespasian
3.03g
Ex-Barakat

14 minutes ago, David Atherton said:

This. Anyone who doesn't recognize the importance of his collection isn't being serious. 

+1

I'm glad if nobody sees the importance of the Clay collection, more for us that do! 

On 7/7/2023 at 9:52 PM, Sulla80 said:

We could use a thread for coins that should have gone for much much more.....I do feel like there are plenty of those around. We do love to see the crazy high bids, perhaps dreaming that our purchases last year are now worth 10 times as much.  By that logic, I certainly need to acquire more ancient coins.

My latest coin only shows up in ACSearch about once a year (9 examples in the database).  If I consider Regnal Year (RY Γ  = 3 = 70/1 AD) then there is only one example that I can find in ACSearch.  RPC II has 9 examples from RY= A and 19 examples from RY B and Roman Provincial Coins (RPC) doesn't seem to list a RY 3 coin of this type.  Emmett recognizes the type giving it a 3/5 for Rarity (a rating that seems to mean - "at least a few out there, but don't count on finding one any time soon").

Here's the example in Dattari Savio (355):

and here's the coin:

Egypt, Alexandria, Vespasian, AD 69-79, BI Tetradrachm (26mm, 12.63g, 12h), dated RY 3 (AD 70/1)

Obv: Laureate head right; Γ (regnal year 3) below chin

Rev: Alexandria standing left, wearing elephant skin headdress, holding wreath and lotus-tipped scepter

Ref: Dattari (Savio) 355; RPC II -; Emmett 202.3

70/1 were good years for the Vespasian family - with multiple triumphs for Vespasian and his sons for victories in the First Jewish–Roman War.

Vespasian was sent by Nero to put down the rebellion, and returned to Rome after Nero's death.

This coin in Alexandria, came close to crossing paths with both Vespasian and Titus.  Vespasian was in Alexandria in the Fall of 70 and returned home to Rome ~October.  Titus left Judea in the spring of 71 AD and passed through Alexandria on his way home.  A Great triumph was prepared in Rome when he returned.

RPC 2425?

https://rpc.ashmus.ox.ac.uk/coins/2/2425

I won't post a Flavian Victory, rather one of my other favorites the Bretti.  Victory over Romans in the punic wars...

Head of Ares left, wearing crested Corinthian helmet decorated with a griffin; grain ear below.

ΒΡΕΤΤΙΩΝ
Nike standing left, placing wreath on trophy to left and cradling palm in her left arm; caduceus between.

Bruttium, 214-211 BC

11.72g

SNG ANS 34. HN Italy 1975; Scheu 6

Rare with caduceus

Decent example David.  I've always liked these, even for Domitian😀.  

Here's one with references:

https://www.forumancientcoins.com/numiswiki/view.asp?key=Tribute penny

Outstanding coin.  Congrats David, a worthy coin for your collection

THIRTEEN!

Very nice.  I have a Vespasian aftercast coming from @KenDorney that should arrive this week.  I've always wanted an original struck version, but they are getting more and more difficult to find.  And when you do find one, well, there's always the price!  A well done aftercast is a good option.  Congrats!

1 hour ago, KenDorney said:

It doesn’t work that way actually. We pick the parent category and you can’t work backwards, so if you pick World you can’t pick ancient as a sub-category. If they are listing modern or medieval and it shows in the ancient category they are specifically doing this on purpose. 

That's what she told me, but now that you say that, it really annoys me what Prados is doing!

BTW looking forward to getting the Vespasian Paduan!  

5 hours ago, DonnaML said:

But there's no way that a dealer should be permitted to classify these things as "ancient"; I don't care if it's as a category or as a sub-category:

And that's even giving them the benefit of the doubt that they belong on VCoins in the first place, under an extremely broad interpretation of what "exonumia" means. They're certainly not "medals" or "tokens"; I think political buttons would be OK, but clothing buttons? 

I'm just the messenger!  😶

They said the dealer picks "world" as the category but then picks the subcategory as "ancient" which causes it to show up in the Ancient category

2 hours ago, Molag Bal said:

I sent vcoins an email about the seller listing 18th century buttons under the ancients section last year because it annoyed me too. They ignored me. 😃

They answered me a last month about this issue, but it did take a few days to respond.

Maybe if more people send an email to Vcoins?

They also regularly list modern coins as ancient.  I asked Vcoins about it a few months ago.  Very annoying.