GregH

You have really excelled! I have coin-envy. Nero & Trajan sestertii are my firm favourites. But they all have excellent eye appeal.

Ok, you win the worst Mary portrait competition! And also the prize for worst (or best?) tooling on your groat. What was the tooler trying to engrave? This is an almost admirable in its audacity!

This was the "Julius Nepos" I bought a few years ago when i was young and stupid. It is possibly an altered Libius Severus / Ricimer monogram AE4 but with an altered obverse legend "(DN) IVL (NEPOS PF AVG)". But the engraving style of the legend isn't right. So this would be my worst ever purchase.

Oh god. You must all be coin haters. I purchased just six coins this year! My worst in 2024 is this Mary I groat, which i purchased in person in at Baldwin's in London a month ago. It's an entry level Mary, and for 100 pounds, i think i did alright. I haven't really been buying duds since i first started collecting. That Julius Nepos AE4 was probably my biggest mistake. The warning signs were there - this seller *on eBay* had THREE Nepos coins in stock!

I agree that it's difficult to find a nice Quintillus. Mine is from Cyzicus mint - my main reason for buying it is that it wasn't completely decrepit like 95% of what's on the market. A nice flan, nice portrait - well worth over-paying for!

I'm a swimmer... I swim at least 2.5km most days. I also collect countries. In October I visited Venezuela, Colombia, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana.

Unpopular opinions? I don't care about minutiae that make a coin rare. I don't care about officinae, mints and moneyers. What matters to me is an artistic portrait. After all, there's nothing more common than a rare coin. With British coins, I don't have much interest in the coins before the Tudors, which are generally ugly, generic and lacking artistic merit (except those gold nobles).

My collection is a one-per-ruler Roman collection, plus British monarchs from Tudors onwards. And I'm starting to collect Russian Romanovs from Peter the Great to Catherine II (after which point Russian coins don't have ruler portraits and don't interest me). I have a few odds and ends - like Alexander the Great, a few Byzantines, a few Ptolemaics. But I try to stay focused. Why did i choose these collecting themes? I guess the history of the coins, often the artistry. Often OCD. Here's a few of my trays:

This is a really excellent write-up by the way. I love knowing knowing more about my coins. On a side-note, why are sestertii a feature of the Asterix books when they were not in use in Asterix's time (50-45BC)? cheers

In the last CNG eAuction, I was the winning bidder of this Octavian / Divus Julius Caesar sestertius (or dupondius). I sought this coin because i wanted a Julius Caesar portrait (albeit not a lifetime one). Does anyone know much about this denomination? At what point did bronze dupondii or sestertii come into mainstream use in Rome? One would think that being a less valuable denomination, they would be more commonplace, but the denarii seem to be much more common at this point in time. The Triumvirs. Octavian and Divus Julius Caesar. 38 BC. Æ Sestertius (or Dupondius?) (31.5mm, 19.53 g, 7h). Southern Italian(?) mint. Bare head of Octavian right, wearing slight beard / Laureate head of Divus Julius Caesar right. Crawford 535/1; Alföldi & Giard – (D10/R10 [unlisted combination]); CRI 308; Sydenham 1335; RPC I 620; RBW 1822. Olive green patina, areas of minor roughness, a few light scratches and marks beneath patina. VF.

Thank you and @TIF and @Hrefn. I miss the coin camraderie in this group. The full story about what happened is here: https://www.enducd.org/darren-melbourne I have a new passion now for the charity work in honour of my husband. But I am chasing coins again now. I do want to complete my one-per-ruler Roman series (to the extent that it's possible) and I've put some bids in recently for a one-per-ruler Romanov ruble series.

Hi Apologies, I am very late to this party. I haven't thought about coins since my husband passed away very suddenly in March aged just 34. I'm at a stage now when i can get excited about coins once more. My thoughts on the late Roman bronze coins align with @rasiel. It's really hard to attribute these tiny late 5th century AEs with any certainty. Certainly I've never seen anything attributed to Avitus, Anthemius or Julius Nepos containing enough legend to identify the emperor. These coins are so crude, that even if they have an identifying monogram, I can't even be sure if they're real. I'm not sure whether the Libius Severus nummus (my example pictured below) should be attributed to Ricimer (whose monogram appears on the reverse) or Severus. Beyond Libius Severus' reign, I've given up on collecting these tiny 5th century coins, in favour of solidi which are much easier to attribute with certainty.

On returning to Melbourne today I finally opened my parcel from my generous Secret Saturn @lordmarcovan! And what delights we have here, well worth the wait! Firstly we have a VERY decent Agrippa/ Neptune as. I realise I am a little difficult to shop for, having 155 rulers in my one-per ruler collection. But this is a damn nice coin & I’m keeping it! He’s also gifted me with some Russian wire money - which is excellent because I have been wanting to expand my Russian imperial collection & I’ve wanted some of these old style denga/ kopecks for a long time. I’ve yet to attribute these to their respective rulers, which will be my NYD task (as I’m setting up my NYE party as we speak) but this is a VERY welcome addition to my collection! Thank you so much!

This is top tier stuff - the Domitian and the Claudius are my favourites here!

Unfortunately I’m interstate until NYE. So my next opportunity to check my mailbox will be over a week away. I’m excited though!