Finn235

I'm wondering if it's a combo of acid/electrolysis cleaning + repatination?

Over the past 2.5 years, Stephen Album has sold approximately 800-900 Gadhaiya coins of an unpublished type, mostly in lots of 100-120. I managed to win 3 lots containing some 340ish coins, and discovered that all the coins were struck by only 2 obverse and 2 reverse dies. The prototype: Obverse die I, Reverse A - The obverse is oriented correctly and is reasonably accurate, and the reverse is simplified and chunky, but gets the major details right. About 40% of the hoard was struck with these dies. Obverse I reverse B - Same obverse die but the reverse is more finely engraved, but also more sloppy- the bowl of the fire altar is tilted with crooked lines and it looks like the dot standing in for the Pillar is slipping out on the right side. These are by far the rarest, with only about 10 specimens. Then comes obverse die II with reverse A- a sloppily engraved mess with the portrait facing left instead of right - unique among all of Indo Sassanian coinage! These were slightly less than 25% of the hoard And finally II/B - these were about 35% of the hoard Then, a few weeks ago I spotted a lot of about 30 coins from this hoard on eBay and bought them because I thought I saw some coins that were off centered enough to show some of the extremities of the die. After receiving them in hand late last week, they are in fact a new reverse die C! I/C II/C Each were 7-8 of the 30 coins I bought. Reverse die C I'm still trying to make sense of, but I did my best to orient it for the photos - I'm seeing two lines each for both the bowl and base of the fire altar, a single faint line on the left side for the attendants arms, and the rest is just a confused sea of dots. There are also 2 small dots visible at about 10:00 on the II/C coin that helped me identify these as all being the same die. This entire emission is very unusual and I think was an illicit operation by a few individuals with at least 2 preparing dies. Diameters are fairly consistent at 14-16mm but every coin is a different thickness with weights ranging from barely over 3g to nearly 7g. The coins also have an "edged" look to the flan and many have heavy file marks, but some have edge cracks and many are double struck, so these clearly were not cast. My theory about their production: - Flans were probably cast in trees with hand-carved dimples for each, owing to the dramatic difference in thickness. They probably traced around an authentic Gadhaiya and then just guessed at how deep to make it. - After casting, they were transferred and struck while still soft. They likely started out with one set of dies and then a different individual carved a second set, not realizing that the design had to be reversed. At some point perhaps reverse A wore out or broke, and the reverse C was made to replace it? - When the coins were finished, it appears that the marks from casting were filed off, as file marks are seen on the devices as well as the edge. The concern has crossed my mind that these could potentially be modern forgeries, but all signs point to a highly inexpert and completely manual manufacture. Fake gadhaiyas exist, but they are always machine-made and identical, because the profit margin is far too small to warrant hand-striking.

I always scour lots of 5th century tiny bronzes for Vandal coins. They aren't particularly rare, but definitely constitute a minority, even among lots already sorted into the "minim" sized coins. There is a public domain catalog of post-Roman Germanic coins, written by Warwick Wroth over a century ago for the British Museum. I think a lot of his classifications are considered outdated, but it is still immensely helpful. You can view/download it here: https://archive.org/details/catalogueofcoins00britrich A selection of favorites, cherry picked from dozens of lots containing hundreds of coins Vandals: Gunthamund AE denarius Thrasamund AE victory type (I think the legend is DN RC TRAS for Dominvs Noster Rex Carthago Trasamvnd) Hilderic (be careful; a LOT of Theodosius II or just plain barbarous coins will be sold as Hilderic - his coins end in REX) And some anonymous Vandal types You'll also see a LOT of these sold as Vandal, but I'm not so sure that these can be categorized as anything other than "barbarous" Ostrogoth coins are a lot less common Theoderic Athalaric

To be fair, it can be kind of difficult to draw lines where Persia and Persian-affiliated coins are concerned. I've noticed that CNG differentiates "Eastern Greek" from "Central Asian" based on whether they use Greek or another language. Other auction houses place them under Greek, or sometimes even in the world coins section, between Russia and Spain!

It was the Parthians who didn't strike gold. Sassanian gold is fairly common.

I was eyeing the handful of Indo Sassanians flanking that one but decided not to bid on anything. I noticed that one - is it an official mint product or an imitation? Style seemed very questionable to me!

Small mail day last week First, is an upgrade - an unassuming coin of a major rarity in the Roman Imperial set - Commodus with his younger brother Annius Verus. Annius Verus is known only from this type (two obverse legend variants of the same type), a couple types of medallion, and *possibly* the "four seasons" series of quadrans, although I believe the last has been debunked. The old coin, which I suppose now I need to figure out the best way to sell.... And secondly, a type I had my eye on for a while and finally won a middling specimen at a lowball bid AE10 of Spithridates, Achaemenid satrap of Lydia. Best known for being the man who almost killed Alexander the Great at the Battle of Granicus - he was about to land a blow from behind when one of Alexander's generals cut his arm off, saving Alexander's life.

Another favorite lot of mine came from Leu in 2018: At something like $40 per coin it was pretty much guaranteed to be a fantastic deal. Some of my favorites: This Kyme diobol was unique at the time and was sold by Roma for about £300 some six months before it somehow ended up in this lot. Since 2018 I think 3 or 4 more have surfaced, all in very rough shape. Given the current market conditions, this potentially could be my most valuable coin. This Kebren hemitartemorion sold BIN on eBay for $350. It is a technical marvel that they were able to get a 3D effect portrait of Apollo on a 5mm, 0.07g coin! This Cilicia satrapal portrait obol may still be the finest known, and sold on ebay for $360 This one sold for $250 This one sold for $200 I liked this one too much to attempt to sell it It also had a few more keepers for my collection: Lampsakos hemidrachm Alexander-type drachm of Antigonus I And lots more that I apparently don't have images of on my phone.

Like @Orange Julius said, this is how most of my collection was assembled, so I could drone on for pages about it. Probably my biggest gamble that paid off the most was this lot from CNG Properly laid out: That's a Carausius, Macrianus, Quietus, Marius, and a Magnia Urbica for $240 after fees. I ended up keeping the Carausius, Tacitus, and Saloninus, and still profited almost $600 from selling the rest on eBay. My worst lot: Seems like a great big pile of good silver antoninianii in superb condition with 3 Macrianus antoninianii right on top, right? Most of the lot was conveniently arranged to hide the fact that one side was extremely poorly struck. Here's the Valerian in the center right: That was a "keeper" - many were significantly worse. All in, I think I kept 8 coins and fell $1,000 short of breaking even. Would have been substantially better off just buying individual coins.

It's the AI generated first image that gets me Couldn't be bothered to Google up enough images of actual coins to photoshop in, so they just had ChatGPT whip something up.

My favorite tetartemorion - 6mm / 0.15g

Here's my big one: 220 coins from a hoard containing 4 types of unpublished Gadhaiya imitations (the lone coin is an unattributable error). They are sorted, but not yet weighed and imaged. I was able to buy a total of 3 of the 7 lots from the hoard, which Stephen Album didn't recognize as being unpublished. I've had them for almost a year - I grossly overestimated how much free time I would have over the last 12 months between work and family. Other than that, I have about 75% of the remainder of my Indo Sassanians imaged, and hope that this year I will be able to at least lay the groundwork for a website, and then it won't be as daunting a task to just upload a dozen images a few times a week. Time is my enemy right now 😞

Marius is pretty tough to get for under $100 regardless of condition. I've had several but sold all but this one which cost me ~$250 as an individual purchase from Leu maybe 5 years ago. I feel it's a fair price. I would expect to pay a lot more were it not for the edge splits and slightly weak obverse strike. I am very much a cheapskate when it comes to coins and will usually let a coin go if I can't get it for a "great" deal. One of the few times I was fully aware of the average price of a not particularly rare issue and still happily "overpaid" was this provincial of Germanicus and Drusus from Sardes: It struck me as a "must have" because of the incredible artistry in Germanicus' portrait - which IMO is likely the best if not only realist portrait of the man to survive in any medium. The coins in poorer condition tend to sell for $30-50; I paid $180 for the better portrait.

Perfect occasion to show off probably my favorite lot score of all time!

I had the same issue so I ended up having to drop way more than I was hoping on this one a year or so ago