Finn235

The original

The imitations

I'll have to see if I can match up all my "barbs" with a genuine example of the same type, but for now, my co-equal collecting obsession is with the imitations of Peroz drachms. 

Official

Likely official, probably used in the ransom with central Asian countermarks applied decades later

Some very overlooked "regular" imitations, Likely unrelated to the Hephthalites

Wonky style, but reverse is a good copy

Little to no silver, mint replaced with pellets

Quirky style with unusual "loopy" attendants and mint name is X's

Hephthalite imitations of Peroz always have 4 large pellets outside of the obverse border

Earliest, Bactrian script in early style replaces mint

Intermediate style with pseudo-pahlavi mint?

Later style, bactrian mint

Alchon Tamgha added to obverse die at 3:00

"Kobadien" fabric with numerous countermarks

And then of course, his coins were also imitated in India, the so-called Indo Sassanian coinage 

"Series 0" - Imitations made in India that are closer to the original than anything 

Track 1 was the first to derive from these, characterized by good silver, broad flans, no legends (initially) and the attendants wearing a distinct "herringbone" dress

(I'll spare you the 2,000+ and just post an early one)

Track 2 was probably derived from the initial prototypes as well, and replaced the korymbos (orb) above the head with the Brahmi letter Sa

Track 3 was derived from some early iterations of Track 2, and replaced Sa with Sri, and added Ma before the bust, thus Sri Ma coinage.

On 8/15/2023 at 6:39 AM, GordianAppreciator101 said:

 

The RIC reference for Quintus Julius Gallienus is thought to be fake, as @Lhevae, I and a few others discussed a while back, although, as it is the case with the identification of the 3rd kid with Marinianus, it hasn't been 100% proven. However, I'm fairly inclined to say that it is indeed him shown on the reverse, along with his two (soon-to-be-deceased) brothers on the reverse.

Thanks for the input! Indeed, this is a difficult period to study, as it was very poorly recorded / most existing records probably lost.

So do you know if there are any photos of the coin in question? I would tend to agree with you that one-off coins of personages not otherwise attested should be met with skepticism.

FWIW, there is also this additional reverse type from Salonina during her husband's sole reign

I had treated this one with skepticism because Fecunditas is traditionally shown with a child at her feet (and I don't want to go jumping to conclusions like Wikipedia's assertion that Caracalla and Plautilla had a daughter because "numismatic evidence shows" the goddess of womanly duty holding a child on one of Plautilla's coins.)

BUT, it does make one think...

I actually bought this one last year but just got around to making a post.

A not particularly rare and seemingly unassuming Salonina antoninianus

Lile most Pietas types, the goddess of motherly duties is shown with children. However there are two important details that made me buy this coin without a second thought

The first is the two children to the left of Pietas

The right figure clings to the drapery of Pietas' dress while the left one does not - these figures are almost certainly Valerian II (left) and Saloninus (right), as the former was made Caesar sometime between 254-256, while Saloninus was considered too young to hold office. It wasn't until Valerian II's early death in 256 that Saloninus was made Caesar.

Which brings us to our second detail - who the heck is this?

Like Saloninus, this figure also clings to her drapery, but from immediately beside of her - and this figure stands an entire head shorter than Valerian and Saloninus, like a toddler or young child. Digging a bit further, there is this odd one-off issue in RIC

http://numismatics.org/ocre/id/ric.5.qjg.1

An apparently unique antoninianus of one "DIVO CAES Q GALLIENO", who is at best poorly attested to in the pages of history. Assuming that this coin is the real deal (I've never even seen a line drawing of it, much less a photo) then this small figure is a top contender to be one of the only surviving mass produced depictions of this young Caesar who apparently died sometime between 260 and 268.

Nice ones! These ladies sure as heck aren't easy to find.

I have a matching set of denarii, both with enough problems to make them quite budget friendly

And hubby too for good measure

And just for kicks, I briefly owned one coin of every emperor and empress (except Titiana) in a denarius minted between January and December 193 - I've since upgraded the Pertinax and sold the Pescennius Niger to @Spaniard in favor of a nicer one minted in 194.

I just realized that I never gave the "why" of my Roman collection.

While I do enjoy the history and the art, what really drew me in was how Roman coins were used as a powerful tool for imperial propaganda, and as such are excellent tools for capturing when the most fleeting moments in history were current events. I have a particular fascination with the ironic, I suppose, because those tend to be my favorites.

Some examples:

Probably the most familiar on this list, Caesar's DICT PERPETVO denarii were minted during the month between when the Senate declared that Caesar would act as dictator for life, and when his friends and enemies banded together to put a premature end to his reign. But during that month, no doubt Caesar was concocting some mighty big plans for the future of Rome

Or how about a coin of Rome's first Caesar ever born in the purple - Britannicus? Minted before Nero even was in the picture, this young prince seemed destined for greatness

Or just a couple decades later, Vitellius celebrates the founding of a brand new dynasty that would surely last for generations to come

While that pretender down in Alexandria? Surely he'll be dead in a month

And a recent buy - it's easy to write off the ephemeral third century emperors as irrelevant, but there was still a brief moment when at least they were sure that they would be the next Trajan or Marcus Aurelius. Herennius Etruscus was emperor for only a few weeks, but his coinage optimistically anticipates a swift end to the forces or Cniva and the return of stability to the Roman world - when this coin was minted that seemed to be his destiny... he would of course be one of the first casualties in the Battle of Abrittus, in which his father would also ultimately perish.

Looks like an AE4 to me. There is a fairly type from Carthage with a chi-rho in a double circle, minted under the Vandals and/or Justinian

Thanks for the info! I have it attributed based on the transliteration of the Brahmi, which is the only language on the coin I can sort of read! 😉

If my wife asks - they were all free!

If the tax man asks, I paid $1,000 each and lost substantially on the sales.

Really though, I don't think my collection's value could be determined except through a sale - probably 60% of my Roman coins and 90% of my Greek coins (wherein at least 80% of the value lies) were bought as group lots, which have been partially sold already, either at a profit or loss. I could, through great pain, try to figure out the sum of what I paid, less the dollar figure of my net income from sales after fees, shipping, taxes etc etc.

On one extreme - I was able to make a profit while keeping these coins, so it was like I was paid to take them?

On the other extreme, I grossly over estimated both the average condition of the coins in this lot, as well as my ability as a sub-1,000 feedback seller on ebay to not get taken to the cleaners. Each of these "cost" me something like $200 - which of course none of these would sell for much above $50 if I were to sell them.

I have two active interests.

First and often foremost, I was somehow gripped with the allure of Indo-Sassanian coinage - the fading ripples left by a single moment in history when Shah Peroz was forced to empty his Treasury to ransom himself from Hephthalite captivity. I collected a few, then stumbled on a type I had not seen published before, and then went down the rabbit hole of trying to rework the entire series with a fresh perspective. I'm planning to eventually publish my findings as a website, with perhaps a book coming eventually, if I ever get around to it. My avatar coin was the "tipping point" coin that sent me down this path, it was just so utterly captivating for reasons I couldn't articulate.

Some of my favorite types that are still as of yet formally unpublished

My other primary focus is attempting to collect every member of all Roman Imperial families, in every title they held, e.g. 

As Caesar under a living emperor

As emperor/empress

And posthumous

I eventually intend to make my binder into a sort of "hard copy" with each album page separated by a 1-2 page bio of each person, as well as detailed descriptions of the coins themselves. It's still a long ways off...

And more in my subject of obsession -

All Indo Sassanian coins are imitations of silver drachms of Peroz I, but they are heavier, finer, and lack the obverse pellets found on proper Hephthalite coins, thus they are *not* continuations of that series. Maheshwari in his boom "Imitations in Continuity" posits that the earliest Gadhaiya coins were introduced by a nomadic mercenary tribe who were more amicable with the natives and allowed to remain behind when the Alchon huns got the boot - eventually becoming the Gujjar people.

Whether that is true or not, some of the early iterations of Gadhaiya coinage looks undeniably Hunnic

The trouble is that "Hunnic" looking (Asiatic eye, cranial deformation) people lived in Central Asia long before the actual Huns arrived, so it's difficult to make accurate assessments of how the Huns differed from others.

Burkhara king "Hyrcodes" ca 100 BC - probably closer to Scythian in affiliation than Hunnic

Proto-Kushan king "Heraios" - the Yueh Chi were pushed out of the Eastern steppes by the Huns before becoming the Kushans under 

The earliest "Hunnic" coins are simple imitations of Sassanian coins, mostly Shapur II

Nobody knows whether the central Asian huns are the tribes that called Atilla their king, but the European huns apparently didn't mint coins. The four major tribes of Asian Huns were the

Kidarites, who began minting earlier(?) Than the others, wrestling control of northwestern India and Afghanistan/Pakistan from the Kushans and the Kushano-Sassanians. Their coinage is arguably the most varied, and I only have a few examples 

Peroz "III" was probably a Kidarite

Kidara, from whom the Kidarites got their namesake

Bhuddamitra

And Durlabhi Deva, a late king (imitating a very late Kushan dinar)

The Sassanians didn't like that the Kidarites stopped the tribute payments that they had enjoyed from the Kushano-Sassanians, and so allied with the Hephthalites to destroy them. Peroz and the Hephthalites were victorious, but double crossed each other, went to war, and Peroz was forced to ransom himself and his son when they were taken as POWs. All known Hephthalite coins imitate Peroz drachms, with four pellets added to the obverse margins

The Alchon huns apparently occupied the power vacuum left by the collapse of the Kidarites and eventual extinction of the Kushan rump states. They expanded significantly once the Gupta Empire fractured.

The Nezak Huns kept to their holdings in Kabul and were the last autonomous Huns.

I'm uncertain of the importance of the "trident" crown?

The Alchons were driven from India suddenly and very violently in about 670; coinage seems to indicate that the Alchon sought refuge and were absorbed by the Nezak, as evidenced by coins depicting a Nezak king with a prominent alchon tamgha as the reverse design 

All of the Huns were conquered by the Turks who continued the numismatic legacy of striking Hunnic and vaguely Sassanian coins until the Islamic takeover

Nezak with Turk tamghas replacing attendants

"Phoro" type imitating Hormizd IV, with king's portrait countermarked  at 6:00

Imitating Khusro I, swastika replacing mint name

"Vajara Vasudeva" a Turk warlord, loosely based on Ardashir III

"Tegin of Khorasan" loosely based on a very rare Khusro II reverse

I think this is an obverse die match to your first coin!

I'm pretty sure this lifetime AE As is the correct hair type 

And the other posthumous denarius that got "gifted" to German customs 😞

Nice discovery!

I also have one of those Titus / Vespasian mules - certainly easy to see how the mix up would have happened and I never would have thought twice about it if the importance wasn't pointed out.

Here's one that on paper also appears to be a mule - combining a Constantine obverse with a PROVIDENTIAE CAESS reverse

Although the problem is the mintmark - T*AR for Arles, 3rd officina... which didn't mint for Constantine at all during this emission, only his sons! It's been suggested to me that this coin may in fact be an exceptionally well done "irregular" coin.

Anyone else find it absolutely wild that for the amount that the Eid Mar aureus hammered, one could have done a clean sweep of all 7,000+ lots in the Leu auction?

I'll need to get the pics off of my computer, but I once bought a bunch of medieval Hungarian coins off of someone on eBay, and they came packaged inside of the CD case for a pirated computer game.

This one feels way more "US border patrol seizes watermelon full of heroin" though!

One of the more puzzling barbarous radiates in my collection

The reverse is obviously a barbarous Hilaritas type with a badly garbled legend but the obverse could easily pass for official.

IMO, one of two things are likely behind this coin:

1. It was made in a makeshift mint probably after the fall of the Gallic Empire, with an ex-mint employee making the obverse dies and much less skilled workers making the reverses, or

2. It was made with an official obverse die, looted from the mint and then used in an illicit minting operation

Possibly. I don't see any evidence that mine ever had eyes, but that could have been worn off or else obscured through the patina. I wonder how often these were imitated? If I were a forger, I'd go for something easier to copy!

Which reminds me, I call this one,

"You either fall to the barbarians, or your empire lives long enough to become them"

(That's an official Anastasius I got in the same lot, I was just really tickled by the similarity in the bust style! 🙂 )

I have a fairly extensive collection of barbarous coins, most of which aren't even imaged yet. Some favorites

I don't think I've ever seen a more barbarous Nemausus?

Sold this one a couple years ago, I think it was trying to imitate a Claudius wreath type sestertius but on an As size flan?

Barbarous Claudius sestertius

Need to do more research on this one. Barbarous Hadrian Hercules / boar quadrans? Quite small at only 10mm; I've heard these described as "minim" coins from Caesarea Maritima

Oops! Forger mixed up a lifetime and posthumous Marcus Aurelius die

Matching set of Limes Falsum for the Mother and Father of the Camp

A barbarous Trebonianus Gallus. Need to find the website - a small hoard of these was found probably from a makeshift mint in the Balkans that made coins for Decius and Gallus

More later

You sure it's bronze? Looks a lot like an obol from Nagidos

So I was being dramatic earlier and did actually win a few coins so far - unlikely to win any more unless I get incredibly lucky in the large lots. All are what I consider to be great deals.

Alchon Huns in India, Mehama AR drachm

I collect India, Central Asian, and derivatives of Sassanian coinage, and the lack of a decent quality Alchon portrait has felt like a gaping hole for 5+ years now, but Alchon coins typically go for 3-5x what a comparable Hephthalite or Nezak drachm will

I *had* to buy this "local imitation" Peroz

Because I already bought its twin from Roma last year!

And from the Okidoki collection

This poor Hadrian quinarius was sitting at its 25 chf start bid, watching the "better" examples go for 400+ so I had to give it a loving home! I've been meaning to pick up an imperial quinarius for a few years.

And this one was too good to pass up

Since I'm in too deep to quit my "one of each title" obsession now, I wasn't even aware of this provincial of Hadrian featuring Divus Trajan - sticking to imperial coins, he can only be found on Decius' Divi series (which I hope to complete someday) or else on gold aureii which typically run comfortably into the mid 5 figures at auction!

I'm just watching my "current bids" approach $0 like 

On rare occasions, auction houses like Roma or CNG will offer modern coin lots, and I was able to win this (plus a couple more not imaged) at Roma a month or two back

A pretty eclectic mix, including some silver and gold bullion, a denomination set of South African coins, and a smattering of Indian religious tokens, mostly of Sathya Sai Baba, a famous guru who died in 2011

Not even including catalogues I have a pretty expansive library 

😉

For my classification scheme, I use Track.Series.Type.Variety

Track - An overall evolutionary path coming from the official coins of Peroz and ending whenever people stopped making subsequent copies. Tracks span multiple centuries and contain numerous series that all share a common ancestor and often a single theme throughout. All tracks are believed to start close to the inception of Indo Sassanian coinage, e.g. probably less than a century after the end of Peroz's reign in 484.

Official coin

I'm toying with the idea of a Track 0 for one-off, very early imitations of Peroz that happen to have been made in India (Persian and central Asian imitations exist and are outside of the scope of my study)

Track 1 starts about here around the year 500-550

And ends here, around the year 1350

Track 2 starts here probably not long after 500

And ends here; around the year 900?

Track 3 branches off of early Track 2 when Sa is replaced by Sri and Ma is placed before the bust, maybe around 550-625?

It actually ends a but later than this coin, but it dead-ends into the "Adivaraha" coinage of Pratihara king Bhoja I (836-885) which retains only elements of the fire altar and attendants on the reverse

Series - A large grouping of types that would look similar to an outside observer. They usually span at least a century and can contain just a few types, or up to about a dozen.

Series 1.3 has been one of my favorite both stylistically and for the challenges in arranging them, and all are relatively small early Gadhaiya coins that bear a bust with a distinctive tall head

Types are all generally very similar, probably made within the span of a few years up to a few decades, and certainly from the same issuing authority. They may contain some minor or moderate stylistic variances based on the engraver

Type 1.3.1 all share a stylish, boomerang-shaped head with a long, pointed nose and a very large eye orbit, although the style varies quite a bit

I don't use varieties within every type, but they can be helpful to split a type up by important features, e.g. 1.3.1.1 has the archaic type flame that terminates in an extra dot, a holdover from the end of series 1.2

1.3.1.2 transforms the dot into a vertical line - important because as the only type that has both styles, we can confidently place this at the beginning of series 1.3

Unfortunately, there aren't nearly enough anchors to tie these types to historical events or people, so the actual dates and places are more guesswork, so I focus on the evolution of the designs themselves, hoping that if I can arrange them in the "correct" order, at some point a discovery can be made that lets everything else fall into place!