Finn235

@Prieure de Sion Laelianus was a short-lived Gallic Usurper vs Postumus. Easily the rarest and most valuable of the ones that are even remotely obtainable (i.e. not Domitianus). To hammer for less than $1k (before fees) they typically have to be in a horrid state of preservation, so whoever won this made a slam dunk. It probably would have hammered for €900-1200 had it been properly attributed and highlighted.

Wasn't watching it at all, but dang it I wish I had been https://www.biddr.com/auctions/inasta/browse?a=2600&l=2913741 Somebody just scored a $500 Laelianus because it was misattributed as Marius!

Hopefully I'll get the invoice soon. Both coins deserve their own thread when they arrive. One was won on a £280 hammer but is normally a $2,000-3,000 coin. Honestly expected my max bid of £380 to get blown out of the water by a factor of 5-10! The other I bid £400 but won for £130! I've never seen the type hammer for less than $500, typically in the $800-1,000 range.

I won a small lot of nicer Ptolemy bronzes a couple years ago, two of them had very prominent lathe marks This one additionally has visible file/lathe marks on the edge from where the flan was "edged"

So the last Naville sale was the first one I ever participated in. Put out a half dozen lowball bids, and I don't want to jinx anything yet as I don't even have an invoice yet, but according to Biddr I just set two world records for lowest hammer on two white whales for my Roman set. Easily two for this year's top 10! Anybody else participate? How long does it typically take them to invoice/process/ship?

Nice one! 😉 I still have these two One thing that I don't think is discussed enough is the extreme variance in style in his drachms - for basically any other ruler, the Degenerate style is assumed to be a later imitation, but I haven't seen this for Apollodotus II. I would hazard a guess that even after his death the later Indo Greeks and Indo Scythians continued to strike his coins, which is why his coins seem to be more common than all other Indo Greeks combined, even including Menander and Hermaios.

So sorry for your loss 😞 It always is hard to lose a family member, even when they have feathers or fur. Probably my favorite ancient bird - so inquisitive! I had cats growing up, so no birds for me. Mom slowly embraced being a crazy cat lady over time, and for a brief few months we had ten at the same time - then it was time to say goodbye one at a time. It hurt, but they all lived long, healthy lives, between 10 and 17 years. Wife and I talked about pets after we got married, and eventually took in her senior dog Peanut, a beagle-daschund mix. He lived the good life with us for seven more years, mostly out of sheer force of will while anticipating his next meal We said goodbye in early 2019, and man, it hurt like hell. A few months later wife talked me into going to an adoption fair, "just to look" and we came home with Ares, who we renamed Chewbacca We have no idea what he is, except a very good boy, and an incurable lazy bones.

The thickness of the wreath seems to indicate Vandal minting. Checking Wroth, it seems most similar to these Vandalic imitations of Marcian, but with a bungled R portion of the monogram And as noted by @Severus Alexander the position of the K relative to the wreath does recall these silver issues of Justinian from western mints

One could argue that it doesn't get more eclectic than this. This coin doesn't fit into any collection theme - because it is arguably the most one-off coin in existence! Tanlis Mardates with wife Raggodeme, AR drachm Tanlis was the only(?) coin-issuing governor or king of a Parthian feudatory in Sakastan and Arachosia in the mid 1st century BC, contemporary with the Indo-Scythians and possibly supplanted by the Indo-Parthians under Gondophares. He is known from only one type, in one denomination, and his countermark is sometimes seen on Parthian drachms, or local imitations thereof.

I have to say that I'd be with Gibbon on this one - if I had to pick one era prior to the 1700s in which to live, it'd probably be the reigns of Hadrian through Antoninus Pius. Preferably as a Roman aristocrat and not a Dacian slave 😉 I took this photo of my collection last year for fun - I finally managed to track down every person of the dynasty except Domitia Lucilla, and I haven't had any luck winning an Antinous yet

Nice, Paul. I had forgotten I sold you one of these - and they were from CNG, not eBay. Ebay was where I lost about $60 trying to sell the rest of them 😞 I kept one for myself, too, but apparently don't have it imaged yet. My Indian binder is quite large and most of it isn't imaged yet! As for the interesting reverse legend, I do recall a bit about that. So in Sanskrit, Apratihata means most literally "irresistible" but could also be interpreted as "unhindered". Chakra literally means wheel or disc, but it doesn't take much imagination to say that it is most likely referencing the Dharmachakra, or Wheel of Law: Thus, the most literal translation could be taken as "Irresistible disc" but more liberally could have been intended as "Unhindered/Unbreakable Law". I'm of course no expert on Sanskrit, so I would love to hear more from someone who could speak with more authority!

Exceptional coin, Donna. I love perfectly smooth AE surfaces. I got a nice Macrinus AE from Nikopolis in a Roma lot last year that I ended up holding on to Made a nice companion to my Diadumenian

I have a small set of Sassanians - nothing spectacular but I like them. Ardashir I - The first Sassanian king, and my first coin that I spent more than $200 on Shapur I - IMO the most beautiful artistry on Sassanian coinage Hormizd II Peroz, of course Kavadh I Khusro I Early type Later type Hormizd IV Khusro II Ardashir III And a favorite - Yazdgard III - minted in 651, his final regnal year, in one of the last mints he controlled, after most of Iran was already controlled by the Rashidun

The Sestertius was IIRC reintroduced as a brass coin by Augustus, but it was very infrequently issued and slowly became more popular throughout the reigns of Tiberius, Caligula, and Claudius... Nero was the one who really ran off with the denomination. I actually don't know what the late Republicans used for small change, because it seems like the bulk of the AE coinage was minted from 211-100 BC, with bronze issues being very sporadic and generally scarce after that. Surely the Republican economy had to have some form of small change?

Nice one! I love this series - have an entire binder page, although I've been lazy about imaging and attribution of them

Beautiful examples! I have a few duplicates, for various reasons First off, die matches among Indo-Sassanians are generally rare, and those extant die matches give an idea of which series were rare to begin with, versus those which were initially very large, with very low survival rates. One of my favorite sets starts off with a pair of double die matches Followed by another set of double die matches that shares the reverse die of the first two And a totally different obverse style sharing the same reverse Which itself is an obverse die match to this one with a different reverse Then I have these two, which I call the "Curse of the Obscure Rarity" Also a pair of double die matches, these are both extremely rare Nabataean coins of Obodas II with his wife Hagaru. The bottom one was a surprise from a Naumann lot in 2018, and the top I spotted and sought out in a Roma lot in 2020. It is an ~R2/R3 issue, known from perhaps a dozen specimens, and fetches healthy prices at auction: https://www.cngcoins.com/Coin.aspx?CoinID=381217 Sadly, this is of course too obscure and too pricey for a venue like eBay, and both CNG and Leu refused them as a consignment, so I'm stuck with them. And then sometimes I end up with really nice LRBs from job lots that I either can't list, or don't attract any bidders at what I would consider a minimal starting price, so I just keep them, even though they are entirely superfluous to my collecting focus

For those of you who followed my postings on CCF and to a lesser extent CT, you may know that at some point along my journey of trying to collect one coin of every emperor, I had the epiphany, "Hey, wouldn't it be fun to also try to find them as Caesar and posthumous issues, too?" And so started many long hours of research and many more of trolling auction listings, but that fancy has led to a depth of understanding that I never thought I'd have, and also to coins I never imagined would have existed. Often, I have come to a special appreciation of these coins, as more often than not there is a story behind why a certain title is particularly rare for an otherwise very common emperor. I hope to eventually get all my Romans imaged and to polish up my write-ups for a revived "Portraits of Power" thread (with apologies to my CCF friends - I just lost steam after a while) but for now I thought it would be fun to have a pile-on thread for emperors (and their families) who are normally common, but featured with a rare or unusual title for them. A few of my favorites: Common Emperors as Caesar Caligula, as heir to Tiberius Although he had six(!) heirs apparent, Tiberius opted only to honor his son Drusus with imperial coinage, although the mint at Carthago Nova in Hispania issued for five of them, the last being Caligula. The term Caesar to denote heir apparent had not come into use yet, so here he is given the honorific office of Duovir Quinquennalis, just as his brothers had been several years before. Why Caligula is not featured as a small bust facing that of Tiberius Gemellus, I am not sure - perhaps the latter was simply too young? Antoninus Pius, as Caesar to Hadrian I debated whether this one is rare enough to qualify for inclusion here, but IMO it is certainly much scarcer than any of his coins as Augustus. After the death of Aelius, Hadrian adopted Antoninus and granted him the title of Caesar in February 138, which he held for barely four months before assuming the purple upon Hadrian's death in July of that year. Severus Alexander as Caesar to Elagabalus Elagabalus was pressured by his grandmother into adopting his young cousin Alexander, ostensibly for giving the dynasty some semblance of stability, but arguably it was a calculated move to depose Elagabalus in favor of his cousin. Alexander held the title of Caesar for about 9 months (June 221-March 222) and was proclaimed emperor following a botched attempt by Elagabalus to murder Alexander, which resulted in the Praetorians killing their own emperor. Maxentius as Caesar One of my favorite enigmatic coins, Caesar was a title that Maxentius never held! Given the harsh punishment exacted on Alexandria for supporting Domitianus, it is probable that Carthage was fearful both of what would happen if they supported Maxentius' usurpation and he lost, but equally so if they denounced him and he won. This was apparently seen as a safe middle ground, but after just a couple months of minting these coins, they probably wagered that it was safe to go ahead and recognize his claim as legitimate. Constantine as Caesar Again, perhaps not *so* rare, but the immense number of his coins issued as Augustus makes it easy to forget that he ever willingly submitted to anyone. He apparently accepted the title of Augustus from his father's troops initially, then demoted himself to Caesar, ostensibly under Severus II. He issued his own coins as Caesar until 307, when he again tried for the purple. As Emperor or Usurper Clodius Albinus, as Usurper Almost as soon as Pescennius Niger fell, the shaky alliance between Clodius Albinus and Severus imploded. Severus named his son Caracalla as Caesar, double crossing Albinus, who fled to his loyal troops in Lugdunum where he was proclaimed emperor, but fell in battle against Severus several months later. Diadumenian, as Augustus We know from history and a few coins that Diadumenian was proclaimed emperor in a desperate attempt by Macrinus to sway popular support away from Elagabalus. All three were at Antioch at the time, so it makes sense that Antiochene provincials would be among the only coins to recognize Diadumenian's promotion. Exact attribution to this mere month at the end of the young boy's life is troublesome, but this coin has an awkwardly-squished CE beneath the portrait, which can only stand for CEBACTOY, the Greek equivalent of Augustus. A similar issue shows Diadumenian as laureate, and is certainly an issue celebrating him as emperor, but in my opinion, a likelier explanation for this coin is that the engravers were instructed to produce a large volume of coins for the populace with no warning, and so had to simply modify the legend for the initial issue while the "final" portrait was being prepared. The bare headed issue comes both with and without the CE beneath the bust. Hostilian, as Augustus Perhaps better known for his tenure as Caesar under Decius, in an unprecedented act of compassion, Trebonianus Gallus refused to execute the young Caesar, instead adopting him as his own son and promoting him to co-emperor. This reign did not last long, as Hostilian was dead, probably of illness, less than six months later. Julian II, as Usurper Julian's first issues as Augustus interestingly take the form of a rather large issue of siliquae, only from Westwern mints, and featuring a clean-shaven portrait. Although their armies never clashed, Julian was a Usurper against his cousin Constantius II for nearly two years, and these coins seem to have been minted in order to buy the loyalty of his armies. Deification Issues Claudius The first emperor to actually be deified since Augustus, Claudius was held in much less than high esteem by most of the senate and people of Rome, so the issue of deification coinage was minimal and mostly restricted to these dual portrait coins from the provinces. Just a few years after his death, Divus Claudius was already being ridiculed, most notably by Seneca who wrote a play in which the spirit of Claudius is turned away by that of Augustus, and sent to Hades where he is doomed to the Sisyphean task of playing dice with a bottomless cup, as punishment for his gambling vice. Claudius was the only major deified emperor who was skipped over by Decius in his deified emperors series. Sabina No coins of Sabina are especially common, so it is no surprise that her deification Issues are quite rare. In fact, given how the couple loathed each other, it is surprising that Hadrian deified his wife at all. Hadrian Despite his reputation today, Hadrian was deeply unpopular with the Senate in his final years - the Senate even demanded that Hadrian's name be condemned to be forgotten. Antoninus had other plans, and threatened to abdicate if his adoptive father was not consecrated - this moved the senate who bestowed the honorific Pius on their emperor, but still kept the coinage to an absolute minimum. The vast majority of Divus Hadrian coinage is from Decius' series, which is saying quite a lot. Severus Again, not *so* rare, but the immense issue of lifetime coins by Severus utterly eclipses the short series of deification Issues, which were of course impacted by the ongoing feud between his sons. Julia Maesa A major rarity of the Severan series, she died not long after Alexander began his rule, although the reason for her rarity is puzzling - Perhaps Mamaea simply was tired of grandma stealing her spotlight? Victorinus A particularly enigmatic coin, given that Victorinus did nothing particularly worth being deified for. One leading theory is that these coins were minted during an interregnum - His mother Victoria handled the affairs of the empire, including recalling Tetricus to recruit him as the new emperor. Numerian I have heard conflicting theories about this small and very rare issue - that it could have been minted by Carinus to attempt to sway the East against Diocletian, or that it could have been minted by Diocletian to assert himself as the rightful heir to Numerian. Regardless, Numerian holds the speedrunning world record for quickest movement through all three titles - moving from Caesar to Augustus to Divus in just 3 years! Galerius Galerius was probably only on good terms with Maximinus II when he died, which makes his deification series understandably tough to find. Ironically, since he, Constantius, and Maximian were all deified, that means that of the four original Tetrarchs, only Diocletian was denied godhood!God hood! That's all for right now - so let's see any that you have!

I really need to get my world coins imaged - long before even considering branching into ancients or seriously pursuing Japanese, I used to go and blow $10-20 on literal bags of world coins, of which I built an eclectic accumulation of pretty stuff. Most of these were more recent purchases, but I like them: I have a handful of notgeld, but this 50pf from Frankenthal is my favorite - one of the more captivating designs of the 20th century IMO I've always been a sucker for those big French colonial aluminum pieces A more recent purchase - my pick from a large lot of these @CNG - Horrible person, but beautiful crown sized silver Ditto with the USSR - horrendous, corrupt state but darn it if their propaganda wasn't beautiful and inspiring And I guess these aren't technically "world" coins from the perspective of an American, but I got these three Hard Times Tokens for peanuts at Roma maybe a year ago, and it's like holding one of those scathing early 19th century political cartoons in your hand

Here's a horrifying one: https://auctions.sovr.co.uk/index.php?option=com_timed_auction&view=lot_detail&low_estimate=0&high_estimate=25000&keyword=&exclude_keyword=&sort_by=lot_number&image_filter=0&box_filter=0&paper_filter=0&export_issue=0&arr=0&auction_id=15&list_type=list_view&lots_per_page=18&page_no=1&lot_id=724034&search_type=&year=&month=&department_id=&cat_id= Found at the beach in the 1800s, the finder didn't like the black coloration of the coins, so they plated them all in silver and punched holes in them, turning them into a necklace. In the lot was an EID MAR denarius...

- Coin Community Forum - I really like the close-knit feel of this forum, and is a good place for friendly discussion. I stopped posting as much because of the small file limit, the expectation to always re-use files, and most of the members drifting away, leaving mostly only ID requests - CoinTalk - I didn't really have a problem with it, but just followed most of the members here. Was fun while it lasted. - Forvm - Never was a huge fan of the stiff, scholarly culture there. It seemed like they were more interested in catalog numbers than history or art, and I always felt a little uneasy about the prohibition against discussing price, especially for a website that was notorious for charging up to 5x FMV for utterly common coins because, "Guaranteed Authentic!" - Reddit - Fun to post occasionally, but I agree that the text-only comments are a drag. Also the number of "how much is this worth" posts with a horrendously bad fake are annoying. - WorldOfCoins - Hands down the best subforum for Indian coins, but never got drawn in to the rest. 128kb upload limit prevented me from bothering to compress my images just to post there. - Twitter/IG - Nope. Never created an account and I refuse to ever join. Sometimes I regret that I ever even joined Facebook or that I let myself become too attached to let it go. - Facebook - For IRL friends only. I don't ever post anything coin-related with an account that is easily traceable to me, nor would I be comfortable with random strangers from a Numismatic group seeing pictures of my kids or being able to figure out where I live by the pictures I'm tagged in. - Zeno.ru - I love being able to drill down into obscure rabbit holes, but the main area of interest to me (Indo Sassanian) is organized according to Mitchiner/Maheshwari, and I don't think I'd be able to post there much without trying to convince Charm to re-organize it all.

Those are some beauties @robinjojo! I've been pining for a Koban for a whole, but have usually shied away when bidding tops $1k (and it almost always does) because the majority of specimens that I've ever seen that were graded by a TPG come back body bagged as "Genuine - tooled". Still have the type on my bucket list, regardless. And out of curiosity, how much did that trade dollar run you in the 90s? That's another type I've written off as simply unaffordable - if I'm going to drop $2k+ on a coin, it's going to be a spectacular Greek mini masterpiece, a Roman emperor/Usurper I'm still missing, or something gold. I tried to win one on ebay a few months back from a trusted seller - it had been countermarked to hell and back and was quite beaten up - and it still hammered for $600+

Glad to see they are still being enjoyed!

Before getting into ancients seriously, my passion project was a type set of Japanese coins. I'm not a big fan of the recent (since the mid-90s) commemoratives, but I find Japanese coins to be very beautiful and usually tastefully done. A few of my favorites: Tempo Tsuho 100 mon (1830s-1860s) Ryukyu Tsuho, 1/2 Shu (125 mon) 1 bu gin (1,000 mon) 50 sen 1870 (Meiji 3) 2 sen 1874 (Meiji 7) 1 yen 1884 (Meiji 17) 50 sen 1923 (Taisho 12) 5 sen 1937 (Showa 12) 1 sen 1941 (Showa 16) 100 yen 1958 (Showa 33) 100 yen 1975 (Showa 50) - Okinawa Expo circulating commemorative 500 yen 1992 (Heisei 4) - 20th Anniversary of Retrocession of Okinawa non-circulating commemorative

Thanks all! This seems like the forum is off to a great start, so I am excited to see where things go from here. No, unfortunately, I haven't had any luck winning one of those yet. They are lumped together with the Peroz-type imitations on both Zeno and Wikipedia, but are totally unrelated and I think actually derived from Shapur II or similar. Still would love to have one though 😉

Hello all, I am sure that 80% of you already know me from various "other" forums, but it still feels silly joining a forum without some semblance of an introductory post! I've been collecting coins since I was old enough to not put them in my mouth, but didn't come to the dark side until about summer 2015. After dabbling aimlessly with lots of utter garbage from eBay for about a year, I eventually decided to get more serious. After some adjustments in my focus, I eventually settled on two main collecting themes: 1) A collection of Roman Imperatorial and Imperial coins from Sulla through Justinian, with the added twist of seeking out an example in each "title", e.g. - As Caesar, or a similar junior position under a living emperor - As Augustus/Augusta - As Usurper (for the two where a distinction can be made) - Posthumous, both Divo/Diva consecration issues and restitution issues. And then of course my main numismasochistic obsession, 2) Indo-Sassanian drachms, for which I am working on a revised attribution scheme, which I hope to begin publishing online within the next year or two. Just for fun, I decided to bust out a picture of my current backlog which I am in the process of sorting, attributing, and imaging That's about 2500-3000 coins. In addition to this, of course I have some other odds and ends - A dabbling set of Indian ancients through the British Raj era - Whatever few Greeks fall into my lap via large lots and then catch my fancy (plus a few individual purchases) - Other Miscellanea, including a few Celtic, Parthian/Sassanian, Islamic, Chinese, and Crusader/medieval coins I'm excited to see lots of familiar faces here, and hope to soon kick off a few threads that I hope will be fun, educational, and engaging!