dougsmit

12 hours ago, Sulla80 said:

the relevant listings with weights from  Duyrat.  Worth noting on the EO example:

OE engraved upside down?

Excellent!  This listing not only confirms the expected weight but listed several fourrees heavier than the CNG coin.  Thank you very much.

Before being too hard on CNG in this manner, I will need to see any listings for coins that late (perhaps year O or later) including weights.  I have no evidence that there is a coin of that group that is solid at any weight.  Do any of the references copied here give weights?   Year 69 used good weight but the listing "EO Year 75 (Price n/a) = 195/4 no image (only one referenced: Gorny Munich 42 11-Oct-1988 Lot 187 17.10g)" draws attention for being a miscopied listing and EO rather than OE for 75 seems odd.  Reading errors happen.   I wrote a, yet unanswered query to CNG on the matter but many people are on break this week so lack of quick response is not all that disturbing.  What bothers me most is that the same example keeps being listed and sometimes delisted suggesting someone out there is determined to sell it as a good coin when they are well aware it is not.  

I miss collecting ancient coins but have resolved to buy no more in 2024.  I retain interest in the coins I have and value most highly the friends I have made along the way.  One of the most valued of those friends pointed out to me a coin I would love to own but would not have purchased when it sold in CNG sale 123 lot 219 for well under its estimate.

https://cngcoins.com/photos/CNG_Links/video/CNG_123/219.html

https://auctions.cngcoins.com/lots/view/4-9K4CQY/phoenicia-arados-circa-2465-1687-bc-ar-tetradrachm-29mm-1325-g-12h-in-the-name-and-types-of-alexander-iii-of-macedon-dated-cy-76-1843-bc-good-vf

 Here is its story.  I bought a coin in a Frank Robinson sale.  It was correctly described as a fourree.  IMHO, Frank remains a good guy in the hobby.  Back then he was a major source for coins for my collection. 

https://www.forumancientcoins.com/dougsmith/f87.html

Shortly after that, I became aware of a coin being offered by the late Tom Cederlind (another fiend who is missed) list 85 coin 43 that was not listed as plated but weighed less than my coin's 13.8g AND showed what I believed was signs of very small spots of core exposure.  I notified Tom and he returned it to its consigner.  I have recently been giving away my coin catalogs and lists and no longer own that Cederlind list.  I have vague memories of later seeing that coin offered again by another dealer (but I forget who) that also delisted the coin after being made aware of the 'problem'.  I never had the coin in hand so I never photographed it.  

The CNG 123, 219 coin may or may not be the same specimen but I believe it is different because I do not recall that one being double struck.  CNG, IMO in error, read the date incorrectly due to the double striking.  The Cederlind coin was dated OE with a curved E in exergue.  My coin is poorly centered and that date is off flan. This I deeply regret!  Still, the die break across the body of Zeus and other design points demonstrate without doubt that the coins are die duplicates.  

The question is whether the CNG coin is also fourree.  I believe it is but I have never had that coin in hand either and possible pits of core exposure are very, very small.   However, the obverse chin of the CNG coin is dented which makes me wonder if there has been something going on under the surface.  I could forgive a hurried cataloger not recognizing that this coin was plated.  

Here is where I ask help from my Numisforum friends (current or future).  If you have Cederlind list #85, please show me his listing and photo.  If you have seen this or any other coin with these dies (with that die break on Zeus), please tell me about it and provide a link.  If you have any Arados coin of these types dated year O or later (OA, OB etc.), I would like to see it.  This is very late for this series and I have not seen a coin this late that is certainly solid.  CNG listed references: Duyrat Autonomous Series I, 1342–9 var. (unlisted dies); Price 3403; HGC 10, 61; DCA 771.  I have none of those books (especially Duyrat which I would love to see).  Do any of them actually apply to this coin or are they just Arados Alexanders in general?  

Thanks to all who read this.  

3 hours ago, Sulla80 said:

Great post, @Ryro - my first Septimius from Rome was acquired in 1975, my second ancient coin, and I still struggle with properly attributing the various mints.  I am grateful to @maridvnvm & @dougsmit for their continued attempts to educate on the styles, technicalities, legends, and history.

 

My favorite Emesa coin of Septimius from the Richard McAlee Collection, certainly inspired by @dougsmit's page on Die Links where this coin is an obverse die match for coins B & H with a different reverse (not pictured in the set). 
 

Septimius Severus. AD 193-211. AR Denarius (19mm, 2.78 g, 12h). Emesa mint. Struck AD 194-195.

Obv: IMP CAE L SEP SEV PERT AVG COS II, laureate head right

Rev: FELICIT TEMPOR, grain ear between crossed cornucopiae

Ref: RIC IV 373; BMCRE 347; RSC 142b.

Notes: Light golden toning. Good VF.

 

The obverse die easily recognizable with a small die break connecting hair to legend:

Which makes it easier to notice when it is paired up with a different reverse e.g. (not my coin: https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=10603018)

Perhaps interesting to note that the ACSearch image search doesn't find any matches for my coin (not even this coin which is in the database twice from two sales) when I search with the image of obv & reverse, however it does find one die match (the same coin) when I search with only the reverse die:

We are still far from AI die matching being able to do die studies.

I tried to sell a coin of this die on CoinTalk via John Anthony.  No one wanted it so I decided to clean it and keep it.  I am not a good coin cleaner but it does look better to me now. 

I was planning just to keep my other one which had more legends on flan.

I began my interest in Septimius denarii of the Eastern mints about 1963 when in high school.  One of my first coins was purchased from Joel Malter for $13.50 which was at that time a lot of money to pay for a denarius of Septimius but I found it interesting enough to call it 'my favorite coin' when I started my website in 1997.   Anyone not familiar with that tale is invited to read the 'why' on the last update of that page.  

https://www.forumancientcoins.com/dougsmith/f01.html

 The coin appeared on what became one of my favorite pages on the site along with several of its 'friends' from the mint known as 'Emesa'.  It and most of my favorites from that mint shared the early style I called 'longhead'.   Of the fifteen coins on that page, none are what one would call common. 

https://www.forumancientcoins.com/dougsmith/bride.html

The later coins of this mint used a different style I termed 'roundhead'.  These include some that are rare and some that are actually quite common (at least common enough that I have a dozen of them).  When I got them, many dealers considered them defective.  Frank Robinson sometimes listed them as questionable because the style was wrong.  Dr. Saslow told me they were not worth collecting.  I could not abide by his ridiculous prices but did trade one I had for one he had that I had never seen before (or since if you count the style).  I gave him one similar to the one below (almost as nice)

and took his defective, barbarous and uncollectable Mars Pater.  Who has one?  

Roman Collector showed some nice 'Emesa' Julia coins.  A few others are on my 'Bride' page but I'll stick to Septimius here.  These are a few examples of less commonly seen coins of the group.   There are others with minor variations (especially of Minerva) that we don't see as often as the common group.  My collection is far from complete.  

While I still like my 'Emesa' coins, I am more fond of denarii of Alexandria.  maridvnvm really seems to prefer the group known as 'Laodicea'.  I have relatively fewer of them.  The mint city assignment of Alexandria strikes me as rather certain but the others have been reassigned by some 'experts' to other cities including Antioch.  I do not believe those to be any more correct than the traditional attributions (Mattingly in BMCRE vol V).  I favor a system of mints travelling with Septimius and not solidly fixed in any city.  I don't plan on living to see the end of this question.  

There have been several prominent collectors of these coins that came and left in the time I have been interested.  My late friend Roger Bickford-Smith passed away (and excuse I can accept).  The others cashed in and moved on to other ventures.  I suggest those interested in the subject acquire or visit online the catalogs of their collections.  

The fact is that I will never be frequenting these pages often enough to be first with the best information again but, since my name was mentioned, I will post 100% agreement with the Rome ID.  I discover that I do not have one of these from Rome.  Later period, Rome mint coins were never as much an interest to me but most of the common ones came by accident over the years.  My 'Laodicea' example came to me in 1995 from Freeman and Sear's first mail bid sale lot 499.  It was then graded as VF which I consider appropriate and hammered for $90 plus fluff totaling $100.10 on an estimate of $140 which I (and the competition) considered ridiculous.  Despite the wear, I bought it for the style and strike.  

I spent a good deal of my life between 1997 and 2003 trying to help various people learn the differences between the mints for Septimius.  In large, I failed.  Today, most of the big dealers seem to have caught on but we still see too many  'professional' sellers who neither can or care to look them up.  I have no easy and complete answer to how to tell that might not be fooled by some errant coins and we have to allow for the fact that there are some unofficial coins out there that copy one of the other making a few 'none of the above' specimens.  My second coin is low grade silver (or AE with a bit of silver) and less than certainly official Laodicea.  Was it 'Friday night at the mint' or just a copy based on having seen a Laodicea or Rome coin?   I'll never know. The longer I have been looking at these coins, the less I think I 'know' for certain.  What do you see here?  I see a less pleasing coin of less skilled style with lower grade metal that I bought for $11 from Matt Kreuzer in 1997 as Laodicea.  Was that correct? Is it official?  Where was it made?  I have opinions but none that I want attached to my name.  A few weeks after I bought that coin, I started my website and too many people started quoting what I had to say as if it were truth.  Everything there was my opinion of the truth at that time but it was not 'fact' in the most strict meaning of that word.  I  no longer believe in truth in history or in numismatics.  What we 'know' is what someone reports having seen or interpreted from reports of others.  I will continue to have opinions and be happy to listen to those from 'higher authorities' but I will remain in possession of several coins that no longer make me willing to suggest anyone listen to my opinions on the subject in question.  

Those of you here who deny the value of such coins in their day must have been suicidal in 1965 when the US started making quarters out of something other than silver.   Today, the main use of a quarter made of any metal is to set free a shopping cart at US versions of Aldi's grocery stores.  I understand their EU stores require a one Euro coin.  

I still have quite a few Claudius II coins and am not sure what came over me that made be let that one go.  

On 12/17/2023 at 8:27 PM, Roman Collector said:

I'm hoping that @dougsmit comes in and offers his opinion. 

 

The old term for underweight, unofficial, AE coins was 'Cast in Gaul'.  I found it odd that more of them were 'better' reverses than the average for full weight coins but when I was studying coins, no one took unofficial coins seriously and those of us who admitted any into our collections were considered fools.  I know no more today than I did when I got what I have forty years ago.  If I were buying coins today, I doubt I would be buying more.  They are a part of what we study but exactly what part is something I do not claim to understand.  I believe they are ancient but I can prove nothing. The easy answer for professional scholars is to ignore everything they do not understand. 

As much as I dislike the practice of slabbing and third party grading, I am quite convinced that the fraternity of coin dealers got what they deserved due to their abuses in grading.  People today can and often prefer to buy coins from someone who knows nothing beyond have to read a slab label.  When I had been in the hobby for a few decades I started being bothered by a lack of coins described for sale bearing grades under VF.  Previously, I had seen coins graded F or VG that were still attractive to my eye but it came to be common to see a Fine coin termed VF 'For These'.   This reminded me of time in school when tests could be graded on a 'curve' where an 'A' was defined as the best any student had done even if that meant no one had answered half the questions correctly.  Writing tests requires a fine line between creating something so easy that everyone got 100% and one so obtuse that those fluent in the language would not be able to find the verb in the question (because it had no verb).  

My green coin is quite worn.  I have faith that our friends at NGC would call it no better than Fine because that is the correct grade for a coin with that much wear.  Where I despise NGC is their parallel offering of a lower tier of slab product that does not modify that letter grade with the numeric ratings for strike and surface.  Fairly, my brown coin would grade EF for lack of wear but get the lowest surface grade making it obvious that the coin is not desirable.  In a cheap tier slab, the green coin would rate F and the brown one would still be EF.  In the old days, that brown coin would have been downgraded to no better than VG simply to point out it was as ugly as sin.  Today, many people recognize no grade other than wear.  That is the fault of NGC and their cheap tier slabs.  Now it is 'normal' for a coin to be mint state and pug-ugly.  Perhaps we need a new grade to accompany 'fleur-du-coin'.  How would the French say 'immaculate weed'? 

8 hours ago, DonnaML said:

*On the other hand, I paid only $300 for it a few years ago, and cgb.fr is currently offering this one for 400 Euros, so maybe mine isn't so bad after all:

Donna's coin and that poor specimen remind me of my two Vesta asses.  The green one is has wear to Fine  but I found it to have eye appeal enough that I was willing to pay $213 in 2001.  The other one has been with me for many (more than 30?) years but never was assigned a catalog number in my collection because I considered it embarrassingly rough despite the fact that it has less wear and more detail than the green one.  I pulled it from a junk box ($10?) mostly because it is an example of the relatively rare variation of the as that used the obverse legend common on sestertii naming Caligula as the grandson of Augustus rather than the son of Germanicus.  To this day, I have trouble understanding why so few people find this distinction significant.  I have never considered myself a 'condition snob' and I most certainly own other coins worse than this one but I never could bring myself to admit it to the numbered flock.  Also, I never was able to find a decent specimen with that legend in my price bracket.  I like the style.  The legends are clear and full.  I just hate poor surfaces.  Would it slab as EF 5/5 1/5???  Today, we have DOGS like that CBG being offered for 400 Euros?  That is why I no longer buy coins.  At the moment I have no intention of selling any of my coins and this would not be the first coin I'd cut loose were I do sell some but I still have not taken the trouble to adopt it formally even though I have had it in foster care for a very long time.  It hurts me today that so many collectors fail to find interest in anything but wear based grade.  Do strike, surfaces, style, legibility, and eye appeal mean nothing?    I agree with Donna's (not so bad) rating of her coin and suspect that it will someday be sold by dealers as 'about Proof' (based on how inflation seems to be moving lately).  It is common for people my age to bemoan what we see as the fact that the world is going to 'Hell in a Handbasket.'  The coins I have been seeing offered as exceptional in some big sales are starting to get worse even in grade but more disturbing to me is that so many of them are just boring or ugly. 

On 11/22/2023 at 10:42 PM, Sulla80 said:

Another fantastic writeup, @Curtismo, love the interesting coin type, the progressive illustrations of Rome, the information on the Circus Maximus, the provenance, ....just excellent.  Here's a fairly recent Severan addition: : a Rome mint Severus with a portrait that I believe is from his first issues (193) from Rome as the portrait looks like a combination of Pertinax, Septimius and even a hint of Albinus.

Septimius Severus (193-211) AR denarius, AD 193 (1st issue). Rome, 3.18g, 18mm.
Obv: IMP CAE L SEP SEV PERT AVG, laureate head of Septimius Severus right
Rev: VICT AVG TR P COS, Victory advancing left, holding wreath and palm
Ref: RIC 22; BMC 30; RSC 682

 

@dougsmit your always informative, thought provoking & educational posts are missed...and many gifts to those who read them remain appreciated.

I have always been attracted to the first year Septimius portraits and certainly those few that remind me of another of the contenders of that year.  These are a random sampling of styles an not at all inclusive of what is out there from 193 Rome. 

While I am flattered that some people remember me kindly, I have nothing new to share except the same old 500 or so SS coins many/most of which you have seen over the last 25+ years.  

My 'new' coin is actually a type for Julia Domna with Herakles on the reverse.  It was gifted to me by a kind friend as you already know.  All I have to offer is swapping the obverse of Domna to the left side. 😁

I am always happy to receive notes on any coin subject.  I don't get here to see posts as often as I'd like but spend more time with my photography hobby.  It costs as much as the coins and returns enjoyment without selling things.  I am in the process of selling/giving away part of my collection of catalogs and books but am not planning to dump coins yet.  I still enjoy them but have no plan to buy more.  

What, more specifically, would you like me to post?  I have relatively few Rome mint coins.  I assume you all know that Curtis Clay sold his coins to Harlan Berk and they have started appearing in HJB lists.  If he had sold his collection five years ago, I would now be in the poorhouse.  Timing is everything. 

That is why I made the photos on my FH page in groups.  

https://www.forumancientcoins.com/dougsmith/fh.html

https://www.forumancientcoins.com/dougsmith/fhthes.jpg

Mine is a die dupe of BMCRE 714.  I bought in i996 partly for the Romulus and partly for the left portrait.  The market today for Fine coins is not good but you probably could find a better one if you value lefties.

Since you mentioned the PBINCIPI misspelling being more common, we

On 9/26/2023 at 7:29 AM, maridvnvm said:

I have been taking some time to get my collection into some form of organisation. This has involved me going through my main collecting areas and gathering all the relevant coins together, looking at how up to date my photographs are, making sure that my records are correct, putting the coins in flips, adding labels to the flips, sorting the coins into some form of logical chronological order and then placing these collection coins into albums. This is taking me quite some time and I am limiting my work to the collection of eastern denarii of Septimius Severus and my Lugdunum mint Probus collection.

I found that some of my coins have not had photos taken in 20 years including the following coins that I have not really seen in over a decade. I picked out the following two coins as they have a common theme to them in that they both depict Septimius Severus on the rear and there is sufficient detail to see that it is the bearded emperor depicted.

Neither coin is in great condition and are generally reflective of my "bottom feeder" collecting style from the time. I would accept coin with multiple flaws in relatively low grade as these aspects kept the price down.

Obv:–IMP CAE L SEP SEV PERT AVG COS II, Laureate head right
Rev:– SPQR OPTIMO PBINCIPI, Septimius Severus on horseback left, right hand raised
Minted in Emesa. A.D. 194 - 195
Reference:– Cohen 376. RIC 415 var. This errored spelling is far more common than the correct PRINCIPI.

Obv:–IMP CAE L SEP SEV PERT AVG COS II, Laureate head right
Rev:– P[IETAT] AVG, Severus, veiled, standing left, sacrificing over tripod
Minted in Emesa. A.D. 194 - 195
Reference:– Cohen 376. RIC 413 (Scarce)

Dark toning

Please share either coins that clearly show the emperor on the rear OR coins that you haven't really taken a look at for a LONG time.

Martin

Since you mentioned the PBINCIPI misspelling being more common we should show the scarce one spelled correctly.  I only have one. 

Those who collect these should also pay attention to other little variations like whether SS is holding a scepter

or just giving a bare hand salute.  

Since I dropped out of buying actively, I have quite a few coins that I have not seen for quite a while.  One that fits here that comes to mind is the Rome mint SS on reverse RESTITVTOR VRBIS:

Less interesting due to the smaller size is one with a horse from Rome.  Mine is low enough grade that some might have trouble seeing his face and beard.

The sestertius version adds a soldier leading the horse.  Again condition makes it less than obvious.  

When I think of 'old friends' I think of this 'Emesa' denarius I got in the early 60's before I kept records.  Most of my coins from that period were sold off in 1974 when I took a break and made the mistake of selling coins.  I kept this one because it was one of my two COSI obverse coins and it is still unique to me anyway because of the supports under the chair on the reverse.  Does anyone have one like that?  To the best of my knowledge no one else ever cared since I have been looking at Emesa coins for 60 years and have not seen another. 

On 10/8/2023 at 10:57 AM, Roman Collector said:

I like this one, not despite its squarish flan, flan crack, and encrustations, but because of these characteristics. I think it fits @dougsmit 's notion of a wabi sabi coin. That's what makes it ancient!

Faustina II, 147-175 CE.
Roman orichalcum sestertius, 24.87 g, 32.5 mm, 11 h.
Rome, late 162 to early 163 CE.
Obv: FAVSTINA AVGVSTA, bare-headed and draped bust of Faustina II, right (Beckmann Type 7 bust).
Rev: LAETITIA S C, Laetitia standing facing, head left, holding wreath in right hand and vertical scepter in left hand.
Refs: RIC 1654; BMCRE 924-27; Cohen 149; RCV 5279; MIR 21.
Note: Issued to commemorate the birth of Marcus Annius Verus in late 162 CE. Discussed here also.

Do we need to be careful not to tell the uneducated ate coins were meant to be circulated as cash and sometimes have personalities not covered by MS 5/5 5/5?  Stamp collectors 40 years ago (when I was one) paid more for used examples of high denominations (like the 90 cent) especially when tied to package wrappers than for mint and uncancelled ones.  I don't know about today.  

Socrates once pointed out that he was smarter than other people because he knew that he knew nothing and they thought they knew everything and were wrong.  Astrophysicists who hold PhD's based on their studies of the pre Webb telescopes are currently scrambling for position in light of the new discoveries that prove they were not as smart as Socrates.  In coins of this period, I will remain Socratic and point out that I do not know.  Die links can  be skewed, for example, if dies or die cutters were transferred from one mint to another and Milan is close enough to Rome that this has to be considered.  This thread has included a lot of information and at least part of it is correct.  Which part???  Of the coins in the group in question my favorite has been The PANNONIAE overstruck on a denarius of Geta.  There are quite a few late Decian period overstrikes but this is the only one I own. 

Decius portraits vary a lot ranging from generic and boring to just a mite strange.  I place my Victory in that later group and have no strong opinion on its status.  Have you seen a die match to it?  I have not.  

Perhaps stranger and, IMHO, more attractive in a Decian sort of way is my Uberitas fourree.  It seems a shame that its maker could not find honest employment.  Perhaps he did fakes as a side hustle???  I'll never know.  

I, too, regret what happened to the coin hobby online and any part I had to do with it.  I still believe that the current market overprices coins of no particular desirability so am currently out for a while or permanently (to be determined).  It was fun while it lasted but became contentious and stopped being fun.  Today was the biggest show in my state but I decided not to go.  A couple of my favorite sellers died and shows are not what they once were here either.   I read Facebook more for coins lately but don't know why unless it is that I am very active there in my other hobby and it is easier to follow.  

Mine came to me in 1991 as BMC 2.313 but I have not seen the HGC book.  The Favorito book on Syracuse AE also lumped the two together as #31 showing more specimens of the eagle than the barleycorn.   

On 4/27/2023 at 8:21 PM, Alwin said:

 

"S.35.1" - 3.77 g - 18.5 mm
Time has passed since this unfortunate purchase, and I could see that this fake was very common. Not all fakes come from the same pair of dies. In fact, for this type 35.1, we see many more fakes than genuine drachms.

Mine has rather obvious casting bubbles but I was blinded by the facing bust and the coin being an unlisted combination of obverse and reverse.  Talk about should have known better!

https://czech.mml.ox.ac.uk/static/polytonic-greek-inputter.html

This may be useful for cut and paste.  ΑΒΓΔΕΖΗΘΙΚΛΜΝΟΠΡΣΤΥΦΧΨΩ

Sometimes it is not so hard to separate the original from the copies.  One odd case is the group of imitation Tribute Pennies found in India that have shown up for sale several times over the last ~40 years.  All are die duplicates and made from good silver.  My guess is that the maker had only one coin to copy and it was off center losing the start of the obverse legend

For comparison, this coin of decent style is quite obviously fourree.  In India, coins needed to be of good metal to be accepted in the market.  Rome worked on a 'buyer beware' system. 

Many solid Tribute Pennies have rather poor style.  They made a lot of them which accounts for how common they are even now.

7 hours ago, ambr0zie said:

A variety of this reverse shows Dea Caelestis holding a drum, not a thunderbolt. As far as I know these are a little harder to find

I would say much harder to find.  My T-bolt Geta is fourree.  I have not seen a solid one. 

I do not have a drum Caracalla in silver but there is this as. 

T-bolts are common.

Both are found for Septimius but the drums are much less frequently seen. 

On 8/15/2023 at 10:47 PM, David Atherton said:

Do you have a rarity that won't win any beauty contests? Please share it.

My coin most rare is still the Alexandria mint Septimius Severus with the common at 'Emesa' type INVICTO IMP.  It could be worse since there is a trace of the final MP showing it did not read TROPAEA (also unknown at Alexandria).  It is the only known specimen which Roger Bickford Smith published in his paper shortly before his death.  I considered giving it to him which would have been a mistake because he would have left it to the British Museum. 

This Alexandria legionary has the far less common reverse ending in AVG rather than AVI.  As these things go, the coin is high grade unless you mind the large pit in the neck.  

Hardly rare in this game, my Septimius and Clodius Albinus facing coin of Pautalia is one of two known to me and is the plate coin in Varbanov (4866).  The other one was sold by Lanz 121,451 in 2004.  https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=197347  It has less wear but mine is prettier.  

https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=197347

The question:  How many coins can there be and still be termed 'rare' ?  The answer is there must be fewer than there are people who want them.  My examples would need to find the right person to be sold at any price while there are a hundred EID MAR denarii and a thousand people who crave the type.  Which is rare?  Who cares about rare coins in this day or arguing about stars on MS 5/5 5/5 slabs? 

5 hours ago, shanxi said:

Pergamon with the common inscription ΠΕΡΓΑΜΗΝΩΝ Β. You have marked a Γ with a red arrow on the left and the letters on the right before the B may be ΗΝΩΝ

I see this as as good an ID as we could hope to have on a coin with so little detail.  Good work!