dougsmit

My Antialkidas is the version with kausia rather than helmet but still qualifies as a cute coin with the little elephant on the reverse (about half the size of Zeus?).  I have this listed as Panjhir mint.  Dates assigned to these rulers vary a lot according to whose list you read.  

Sorry I missed seeing this thread during the first three but I no longer live online for coins and missed seeing it.  For Claudius, I am fond of my sestertius with the NCAPR countermark which is unusual in that the mark is usually placed behind the head rather than in front.  This mark is found on several different types and each has a 'usual' location for the mark but not all follow the same rules.  I have no explanation. 

Second is the Alexandrian tetradrachm with reverse showing his wife Messalina.  Claudius was not good at selecting women.   Many of these are higher grade but many are less clear in the legends.  This 'only fine' example has her name rather clear. 

I have no idea.  Is there any record of any provincial flans being recycled and overstruck at Rome?  

One nice thing about Alexandrian coins is they are rare enough in mint state that we don't have to deal with so many people who consider EF beneath their notice.  

21 hours ago, Ryro said:

Thanks everyone! Here's another deep toned coin(obviously not my photography)

@dougsmit wrote a wonderful article about shooting dark toning on the old site, but I'm not finding it... would love to see some of his dark eastern Septimius Severus coins

I have moved several of my outdated pages to a secondary section hoping to replace them.  'Wonderful' is not a word I apply to these (or any of my) pages.  I keep telling myself that I will write more pages for the site but my hobby time now is going mostly to other projects.  I really should do a single, better page on coin photography to replace all those old ones but it has not happened yet.  

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

If you tell me what it was you liked about that page, I might be able to spare that one while  I am decimating the weaklings. 

Of my Severan coins my favorite black one is this Caracalla Caesar drachm of Caesarea.  The photo shows the glare reflecting from its shiny black surfaces.  

Of my Eastern denarii, I have always been fond of this dark 'Emesa' showing Fortuna seated on a chair with cross supports underneath.  It is the only coin with those supports I have ever seen.  This one came to me before 1964 (I saved it and two others when I sold my collection in 1974).  It is quite dark but nowhere near as dark as the Caracalla.  I realize I am the only person who cares about chairs. 

Thanks to all.  What I learned here is just how varied the letter spacing was on issues by the same moneyer.  There is no good clue based on size of the SC or expected placement for the letters available.  While I agree  Sanquinius  is most likely, I say that more from it not matching any other than feeling good about which strokes belong to letters in his name. 

When you see so many variations on the theme in this one place, you wonder how many more there are that do not appear on this page.  For 'Emesa' RIC lists only the one I showed and its matching aureus.  Your book on the series would make RIC look like a beginner's survey.

While not 'one of two' level rarity, it seems none of the Eastern Septimius issues for Jupiter were among the more common types.  At Rome, the Jupiter type is relatively common but has a dated legend not naming the god.  I wonder if there is a reason behind this.  

'Laodicea'  IOVI INVICT

"Emesa" IOVI PRAE ORBIS

Rome PMTRPIICOSIIPP

7 hours ago, Parthicus said:

Of course, you really have to do your homework, but isn't that the fun part?

Can you possibly mean there is more fun in a thousand coins to be studied than one that you are afraid to touch for fear of smudging its surface?  I would love to know the statistics on how many people are in this hobby for the fun as opposed to the profit.  I used to know quite a few people who had fun but now we see more questions about worth and fighting with shipping companies.  

16 hours ago, DonnaML said:

Taking a quick look at the photos of Augustus dupondii on Wildwinds, it seems there are only about 15 different possibilities in that particular format. But I didn't take the time to go through the 15 and try to match up the letters. Not an easy task!

I did and did not convince myself of the answer.  That is why I was hoping we had someone here who collects these and would care between the choices rather than just if the coin was mint state (these rarely are over fine).  Not easy for me!

A friend gave me this somewhat ratty bronze which is clearly a moneyer dupondius of Augustus but I remain unable to convince myself which moneyer it is and (worse) talk myself out of it being a moneyer known for sestertii but not dupondii.  It has a few letters at the reverse right which might make it identifiable by someone with experience in the series.  The coin does bear the IMP countermark.  I have asked about this somewhere before but have no answers.  I apologize if it was here.  Readings of that reverse legend or opinions are appreciated. 

The unfortunate fact is there is only one kind of coin that sells inexpensively and that is the class of coins dealers have no likely sales to people who will pay more.  Most of these are either small, boring, ugly, damaged, worn, corroded or some combination of all of these.  I have about a thousand coins in this category because I do not buy coins that have nothing going for them except they are high grade.  Perhaps my favorite class of cheaper coins is the group worn but still readable and fully identifiable but not corroded or off center to the point that they lose much of the legends.  There are also damaged coin where the damage is not so ugly as to offset what the coins may have going for it.  For example:  This AE15  provincial of Geta from Nicaea gained enough 'points' in my opinion from smooth surfaces, style and the left facing portrait that I was willing to 'forgive' the large slice on the reverse that really does not hit anything important.

The same price brought this Elagabalus which I never would have considered buying because of its roughness but I was attracted to the extremely large flan.  The Geta is more worn of the two and by far my favorite because I like left facers  and better surfaces. 

The secret to paying less for coins you like is to like coins that other people would not want at any price.   No one in today's condition loving hobby would want these damaged or ugly coins of common rulers but I was attracted to them because I like rare coins and rather few people I know have any of these.  One of my goals remaining is to find someone who would see what they are would appreciate them after I am gone (for free even).  Unpopular, ugly and rare are often cheap.  I only wanted these three of Septimius Severus because I specialize in these and am happy other people did not want them.  I would not trade any of them for mint state denarii of the common types.  If you want a cheap collection, specialize in something ugly and unpopular. 

3 hours ago, mc9 said:

@dougsmit,

Hallo Dougsmit,

With what or how is the coin treated in 1988 ?

Thanks, MC9

I have no idea.  I bought it post treatment.  Then, I believe most treatment was digging away at the metal until you reached solid.  When do you find references to chemical treatments starting to me mentioned? 

Did lions live in the mountains near Chach?

A question for all people with Bronze Disease survivors:  After how long in remission do you consider it safe to stop making regular check-ups?  That is why they call it 'Coin Cancer'. 

Titus has been in remission since 1988.   

4 hours ago, Roman Collector said:

I wonder how the advocates of the "Balkan Mint" theory deal with the absence of dimples on the flan from lathe-turning. That seems to have been the preferred technique for most of the mints in the Black Sea region

I know we have dimpled Ptolemaic AE but when do we start seeing dimples from the Balkans on Greek language Provincials?   My earliest is a Commodus of Pautalia but I have not studied the matter. 

I have never seen mention on whether or not the mints in the Roman period knew about how the Ptolemaic dimples were made so long before.

On 12/7/2022 at 10:41 PM, DonnaML said:

Never mind that there's no such actual species as a panther.

Semantics!   They are all genus Panthera which name was derived from the Greek πάνθηρ. 

Meanwhile I spend less time on coins and more time looking for cute kittens.  Can you ID this one?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panthera 

13 hours ago, maridvnvm said:

Here are a few other legions represented from Rome:-

LEG I ITAL

 As with just about anything I have studied, there is more about these things to be learned.  LEG I ITAL and all the legionaries come in several dies and many specimens are imperfectly centered to the point we might assume readings that are not exactly correct.  I'll show a LEG I ITAL which seems normal which, like the maridvnvm coin, shows the I of ITAL directly above the eagle wing.  

...what do you see here?  Is the numeral I merged with the wing or is the correct reading of this die LEG ITAL with no number?  The more I learn, the less I 'know' as opposed to 'think'!  

We should point out that there are also coins from other numbered legions that used ITAL.  This is LEG II ITAL.  Can you see how an off centered, part legend coin might be hard to identify without comparing dies with other specimens? 

Yes, as a matter of fact there are LEG III ITAL coins as well.

Since I mentioned the possibility of using die matches with 'better' specimens, this might be a good place to point out that there are obverse dies that were used with more than one legion number reverse.  This coin of the common LEG XIIII GEMMV shares the obverse die with my LEG ITAL (without numeral?). 

 I have not made any effort to do a study on die overlapping.  That could show some interesting patterns of use or it might just show a lot of random use.  If one of you knows anything about which legions were involved in die sharing with which others or which never did (if any), I'd be happy to hear from you.  Is anyone out there shopping for a research project and have funding to travel the world (not to mention the Internet) attempting a die study of silver coins that are not terribly common but still a lot more complex than the gold and bronze coins that have been studied in the past?  Is there someone about ten years old (or yet unborn) that will devote their life to such a project?  I'll never know.   Obviously, I would love to see other specimens of my "numberless?" die (whether yours or online).  I'd be happy to correspond with anyone else who even cares about this series. I suspect there are a thousand people who like Antony legionaries for every one who is into Septimius.  

We have seen several tetradrachms of Alexandria and examples of the two rare denarii for Commodus from that city so all I have left to show from Alexandria is a bronze diobol.  Commodus issued many varieties of tetradrachms but his bronzes are more uncommon.  This diobol shows a lion.  I got it in a group lot of tetradrachms but the seller did realize that the coin was bronze rather than billon. 

Roman collector showed one from Rome so I'll just add the Septimius from Alexandria.  It is one of my most recent additions to my SS group.  It is not common. I was surprised to see three on acsearch until I realized that two of them were my coin.  I don't plan on selling it soon. 

It has always bothered me that the tetradrachms attributed to Laodicea bear no resemblance to the denarii attributed to that city. I suppose the fact that the denarius mint operated earlier allows for a complete change of staff and style.  This contrasts to the fact that the denarius mint at Alexandria was attribute to that city based on the unmistakable similarity of the style between the tetradrachms and denarii.  Did Prieur comment on this?  Anyone?  I have never owned a Laodicea tetradrachm.  

A few questions for our metallurgist friends:  If, using the standard technology of the day, a mint worker put 95 units of silver and 5 units of copper in a pot and poured a hundred puddles of alloy as evenly as he could, what would be the variation between the hundred just from incomplete mixing?   If a mintworker went into the storeroom and took out two bags of silver fresh from the mines and assayed them by the best available technology, would he be able to tell the difference between the two in terms of purity?  Would he care?  Did 'as pure as we could do' silver vary from batch to batch enough to explain the differences between 98% and 92% using modern techniques.  Did the mint worker make coins from whatever was delivered from the mines as 'pure' or did he attempt to adjust the best down and the worst up to some standard? Today we 'care' about the difference between 99%, 95% and 92% and it is not unusual for a person to be able to look at a coin and tell which of the three it was.  Did the merchant on the street in Athens consider such things and discriminate against 95% coins?  Test cuts were made to find or deny copper cores.  That is not the same thing as telling alloys within a given range.  Did the person who cut this coin say anything beyond "Its good"?   How low would a coin have to go before it would have been found unacceptable in the market? 

We have seen several of the special Hercules with the home town name.  It also comes in a double sestertius but good luck finding a really nice one.  

On 11/14/2022 at 11:03 PM, Finn235 said:

650 LRBs and byzantine trachys? 650 denarii? At less than $10 each,

It has been a while since we have seen $10 denarii in identifiable condition but you would expect a large discount for having to buy 650.  Would you want 650 assorted denarii that might retail with effort at $50 each?  As a small dealer, would you want to tie up that much cash in coins probably averaging no more than fine.  $10 LRB's sounds about right for reasonably nice coins which we once called 'collector' grade.  To make it worth buying 650, I would expect them to be rather nice and not just random mix of the most common types.  Ask yourself, which of the coins below is worth $10 and would you like them with 600 of their closest friends.  I do wonder who would buy such a lot sight unseen or at all.  I do suspect that the market for coins selling retail for even $100 in that quantity  would be closer to $10 each than we might think.