mcwyler

22 hours ago, John Conduitt said:

Rarity is an artificial construct. It depends on what you and other collectors count as different coins. A different die, legend spacing, legend variant, issue mark, or a bust facing the other way may or may not make it a different coin and so rare or common. The more detail, the rarer the coins become. You get this a lot with Celtic coins. Chris Rudd lists 8 North East Coast staters, 4 South Ferriby staters and 4 similar staters, each anything from very common to excessively rare. But as they say, all these were "in fact one large series of coins which extended over many years." So if you count them all as one type of coin, they are very common.

Then, there are relative perceptions of rarity. With modern coins, 'rare' can mean there are 2,000 of them. With ancients, that is near to the most common. I think generally, rarity scales count a coin with under 50 known as rare, with any further adjectives depending on how many more categories the scale has (very rare, extremely rare, excessively rare, unique).

I created my own scale while trying to understand how this all worked 🤣 In doing so, I summarised other scales. As you can see, rarity is relative and depends on the subset being collected.

Interesting list. 

Rarity should be absolute and measurable, but it's not. 
My main focus at the moment is campgates. They're plentiful, normally easily found cheaply, and there are hundreds of types to search for, what more could a collector want? 

Just this morning I received this in the post:

Constantine I AE follis of Arles. AD 329. CONSTAN-TINVS AVG, pearl-diademed head right. / VIRTV-S AVGG, campgate, six rows, dots in arches in top row, 4 turrets, star above, no doors. T-F across fields. Mintmark PCONST. RIC VII Arles 336; Sear 16311.

If my attribution is correct, it's an R5 rarity in RIC, and it's by no means my first R5 campgate.  Are they really that rare? I do keep my eyes open but I see quite a few in auctions that are rated R3 or rarer. 

They were rated before the Internet, before ebay (the source of this coin) and before metal detecting was really a thing. And perhaps museums, the collections on which RIC was largely based, may be more interested in getting that aureus than collecting all the myriad variations of the fiddling small change of the Late Roman Empire. 

If the coin shown here happened to have open doors and S F across fields rather than T F, it would be rated common. Does anybody care? Apart from me, that is! Well yes I think many of us do, we're a strange lot...

1 hour ago, John Conduitt said:

Yes this is a problem with a lot of Roman coins. Was the emperor happy, blessed, successful, prosperous, fortunate? They're not synonyms. Which did they mean? The same with Felicitas (Felicium Temporum Reparatio).

I reckon if you're the emperor you're all of those. Until the likely assassination and  subsequent damnatio memoriae. 

Interesting coins, to add to the long "must get one of those" list. Your map represents the south as Arabie Heureuse, so I suppose those northeastern issues are from Arabie Triste. 

Carthaginian Domain, Sardinia, c. 264-241 BC. Æ (20mm, 4.88g, 3h). Wreathed head of Kore-Tanit l. R/ Head of horse r.; letter before. Piras 54; SNG Copenhagen (Africa) 151.

I can't help thinking the eating babies stuff is just another example of the victors writing  history to suit their narrative. Not saying they were angels mind you. Septimius Severus was born in the town of Leptis Magna and spoke Punic. Well he spoke Latin too but with a Punic accent. Just a bit of trivia for you! 

14 hours ago, Ryro said:

Congrats on the cool coins and thanks for the write up!

It's incredible to me just how much of Roman history is them being d-bags!? You'd think they'd keep it to themselves that their founder committed fratricide, they kidnapped a bunch of their neighbors women or the atrocities committed by Caesar. But nope. They bragged about them every chance they got.

Exactly! My very worn example

2 hours ago, Simon said:

Here is a lesser known article by an excellent researcher, he is talking about crusader coins but it is the same style for the tetartera.

https://www.academia.edu/39265926/NEW_FACTS_ON_MODERN_FAKE_COINS_OF_THE_CRUSADER_STATES

Currently on ebay, there are 6 under new listing's for tetarteron  that are all fake. The sellers are vintage items, coinhub, vallface.

I don't know if the sellers were duped, but the coins are clearly not right. One is very good that I question if it is fake or not. 

Know the coin or know the seller. 

I don't think the sellers were duped. The first and third are proud members of this useful list of fake sellers.-

http://augustuscoins.com/ed/fakesellers.html#U

2 hours ago, Valentinian said:

Anonymous folles are mostly very common, but most are worn or very worn, so one in really good shape is special (and, for this thread, "beautiful"). Here is good example of Class I, attributed to Nicephorus III (1078-1081):


Sear 1889. 25 mm. 6.18 grams.
Bust of Christ facing
Latin cross with X at center and large pellets at ends, crescents outwards in upper fields, and floral ornament at the base. 
DOC 3.2, plate LXIII and page 696, 64 examples, 5 photographed. This one is, I think, a tiny bit better than any of those. 

Nice! But to emphasise your point, this is what we get in the real world.. 

£10, so mustn't grumble. 

I'm starting to like little coins. Of course the bigger the better for ptolemaic bronzes etc. Or for that matter bars of gold. 

But there's something about those tiny coins. The artistry? The cuteness? More likely the price... 

On 4/9/2024 at 3:15 AM, ela126 said:

Quite like this thread!

Keeping with the recent theme of excellent strikes, here is one of my best billon scyphate coins. Nice amount of silver content (I’ve read about 7% at this time but I can’t cite that)

IMG_6850.mov 21.07 MB · 0 downloads  

Alexis 1 - 1081-1118

Billon Aspron Trachy

Constantinople

SB 1918

4.68g

Ela126 has the better face of Christ, but I like my example of SB1918 too. It's certainly my most attractive trachy, and it came in the post today!  28mm, 4.1g.

I was interested to read this today, thought I'd share it. (Trabzon is what we know as Trebizond.)

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/apr/03/endangered-greek-dialect-living-bridge-ancient-world-romeyka?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

Let's have some more... 

Campgates? Now you're talking! 

I'll have to stop there because I could literally post another hundred and I don't want to make this thread unreadable. But yes, I like a good campgate! Don't mind the bad ones come to that.. 

Just to prove how "good enough" yours are, here are mine. Swap? 

Mine is a bit worn and crusty but I like it, 34mm and 32.64g so not a record breaker but nice and chunky anyhow. 

On 3/9/2024 at 3:42 PM, Roman Collector said:

Maybe he really looked like this! 😂

What is a good portrait? If I were a lowly diecutter asked to create an image of the most powerfuL (and usually vainest) man in the world I think I would err on the side of handsome rather than ugly. I agree with romancollector, Val baby was probably what we would call in these parts a bit of a minger. Mine was maybe the best the guy in Samosata could do... 

That said, perhaps in this case he wasn't the most powerfuL, Shapur was? 

Zero feedback, what could go wrong? I note that, in the English translation, the "authenticity guaranteed" bit seems to have been omitted... Probably just an oversight. 

My Constans II has no pretension to legends at all, but I did like the portrait, so for a 10 euro snack I couldn't resist! 

Good points here from many angles.

My view is that tooling is not only deceptive, but unnecessary. Unlike collectors of modern coins, we mostly accept that many if not most of our coins will not only show signs of use but sometimes significant wear. 

I'll go further - some of my favourite coins are really well worn. An orichalcum sestertius, for example, can grow old very gracefully. Why tool it? If there's enough detail to identify it, I'm happy. 

The only motive for tooling in most cases is profit. Don't make these people richer! 

15 hours ago, Curtis JJ said:

By the way -- in case anyone doesn't know about it -- for years now Ras Suarez has been doing the great work of archiving eBay ancient coin sales (since maybe 2012 or so). And including many other dealers and scanning some print auction catalogs that can't be found elsewhere.

Used to be called COINVAC, then changed to Coryssa a few years ago. One of the great unsung contributions to ancient coin provenance research:

https://www.coryssa.org/index.php

Over 3 million records at present, which is comparable to ACSearch. Takes a little bit of practice getting used to, and become efficient at searching, but I've found quite a few lost provenances in there. (Mainly for coins I knew had appeared on eBay but not when or from whom. A few that were total "cold" cases.)

Whatever the limitations, I'm amazed that he's been doing all that himself all this time.

Thank you so much for that, I read this 10 minutes ago and have already successfully used the tool for a purchase from 8 years ago that I lost details of! 

Nice! Did goatherds always have spikes on their backs in those days? 

32 minutes ago, Hrefn said:

On DuckDuckGo, your site is the top hit, which is not an advertisement, in response to a search “coins of Andronicus I Gideon”.   It is very simple to switch Apple devices’ search engines to DuckDuckGo from Google.  Google is upfront about admitting they track you.  DuckDuckGo claims not to do so.  Easy choice, IMO.

Seconded DDG, just as easy on most android browsers too. 

I use them quite a bit. They ship to me in the UK for £6, so no complaints there! 

About a year ago I thought I'd give Catawiki a try. 

A coin I was interested in was offered by a Spanish firm that seems to use that platform a lot. I bid, it was under the (apparently top secret) reserve. I bid again at a higher price, and again. No joy. After a while I thought oh well, and gave up. 

A little later I was emailed with the "GOOD NEWS!" that since the reserve had not been met they were willing to sell it to me at my highest bid...

This renders the so called auction a joke and while not illegal is in my opinion very sharp practice. If you wish to set a reserve, start the bidding at that and stop messing with the bidders.

I didn't darken their doorstep again! 

Gavin, 

I just replied to the "basililikons" thread below about Opisthodomos. I had a  problem about 2 months ago with them- heard nothing from them  but my coins eventually arrived after 3 weeks (I'm in the UK). Also noticed today that they've gone from vcoins though, and that doesn't look too hopeful. I was lucky I guess... 

I think you'll be financially OK with PayPal, from what I've heard. My fingers are crossed for you!