CPK

The whole business is shutting down, or just the e-auctions?

Nice coin with a great patina!

Depressing thought.

Thanks Qcumbor! And thanks for posting your coin - I for one will never get tired of seeing it and the story behind it! 👍

A great trio @Furryfrog02! That Titus especially!

Congratulations on a major collection score! Funny, I was also looking into coins from Cyprus just recently - although the period I'm interested in is much later, early Roman times.

Becker was certainly an accomplished artist, if a dishonest one! Beautiful coin, @KenDorney.

Rarity with ancients is difficult to define. Going with a number count of specimens found in online databases like ACSearch and Coryssa gives a pretty good idea, but that can be skewed, as you pointed out. A rare coin type that is very popular often shows up more often in archives, references, etc. simply because more effort is made to acquire them. However I would say that your coin is rare. Partly because those hammer prices indicate that it isn't really an obscure type, i.e. that there are enough people who actively pursue them to bring them to the market and drive prices up pretty high. And 19 specimens total, across archived sales history and references, isn't very many at all. Congrats on the acquisition!

Great first gold @ambr0zie! Byzantine gold is about as affordable as you can get, and they're chock full of history and interest. I don't know enough to comment on the official vs. Germanic issue, but it's a very nice specimen either way, with great detail!

Nice coin, and a great patina! That's the same type as mine, just a different denomination and year (TR P VIIII instead of X.)

Thanks Curtis! Great coins & provenances, especially the Commodus-as-Hercules denarius - that is some eye-catching toning on the reverse! 🤩 Thanks! Nice coins. I guess the vows were fulfilled by the time that denarius was struck, but it wasn't to last much longer! Thanks Roman Collector! Yes I thought it interesting the hammer was half the estimate, but then again $100 in 1980 would be worth about $400 today. A decent amount of juice even for a nice portrait coin. Makes me wonder if the coin has any prior provenance history. Great provincial coins, by the way - not just for the plate provenance but they're quite attractive by themselves!

That's a nice example of a historic type! Congrats!

An excellent specimen David! Congrats on acquiring such a rarity.

Been awhile since I was this excited about a coin! 😁 I was browsing the new inventory of a well-known dealer and saw an as of Commodus listed for sale. It was the excellent portrait which first caught my eye. I kept browsing other coins, but made a mental note to go back and take a closer look later. (dealer photo) In addition to the portrait, the coin is beautifully patinated. I also noticed that it was an interesting VOTA type, from the Jeff Clark VOTA Collection. As a collector of unusual as types, I did what I usually do when interested in a Roman coin – reach for the appropriate volume of Sear’s Roman Coins and Their Values and look it up. My eyes nearly popped out when I saw this! 😮 Is that the same coin?? I could hardly believe it! The listing did not mention anything about it being a plate coin. Could I be mistaken? I scrutinized both coin images. No question about it – it was the same coin! How on earth could a Sear plate coin lose such a provenance?? No matter, that was enough to push me over the edge! I bought the coin. Being so caught up in the excitement of discovering a plate coin, I hadn't noticed before that the rarity rating given in the dealer listing was 8/10. It's not even listed in RIC (that reference only recognizes this type as a dupondius.) There is one specimen in the British Museum collection, No. 566: coin | British Museum I did an exhaustive search on ACSearch and other archives but only found three other specimens. It was while searching Coryssa, the database created by our member @rasiel, that I came across this: Coryssa - The Coin Auctions Database - Coryssa - The Coin Auctions Database The same coin! Apparently, it was auctioned off by Numismatic Fine Arts on December 10, 1980. Turning to rnumis (thank you @rNumis!) I found the complete auction catalog. There was the coin – lot 537 – misdescribed as a dupondius, which hammered for $100 on a $200 estimate: Ancient coins. Auction IX : 10 décembre 1980 / Numismatic Fine Arts | Gallica (bnf.fr) How did this coin end up being illustrated in RCV? Thanks to a CT thread by our valued member @Curtis JJ, I learned that David Sear was a cataloguer for a number of NFA auctions, and used some of the coins in his RCV reference books. Check out the thread and Curtis's awesome Philip I plate coin here: https://www.cointalk.com/threads/finding-provenance.403741/page-2 So to make a long story short, I am now the proud owner of a Sear plate coin – which also happens to be an extremely rare type, has a terrific portrait, a beautiful patina, and an interesting collection provenance. Doesn’t get much better than that! 😁 Feel free to comment/post your own surprise plate coins, provenance discoveries, Commodus coins, or anything else! COMMODUS, AD 180-192 AE As (24.84mm, 7.59g, 11h) Struck AD 185. Rome mint Obverse: M COMM ANTON AVG PIVS BRIT, laureate head of Commodus right Reverse: VOT SVSC DEC P M TR P X IMP VII, Commodus, togate, standing left, sacrificing over tripod-altar; COS IIII P P in exergue, S C across fields References: RIC - , BMC 566, RCV 5897 (this coin illustrated) An extremely rare type, with a fine portrait and rich emerald patina. This coin is the illustrated plate coin in David R. Sear's popular reference series Roman Coins and Their Values (Vol. II, p. 411) From the Jeff Clark VOTA Collection.

Wow, what a coin! 🤩

Very interesting coins and a terrific article, @Roman Collector! Thank you for sharing.

Here is a recent purchase, picked up in one of the latest Artemide auctions. I had slapped on a lowish bid and didn't really expect to win, but apparently all the other bidders had bigger fish to catch because when the lot went live, there were no additional bids. I thought it was a very handsome portrait of Hadrian, nicely centered, with an interesting reverse type that is also well-struck. Plus, the coin is nicely toned. Choice VF, I'd call it. 😉 HADRIAN, AD 117-138 AR Denarius (17.73mm, 3.00g, 6h) Struck AD 137. Rome mint Obverse: HADRIANVS AVG COS III P P, bare head of Hadrian right Reverse: VOTA PVBLICA, Hadrian, togate, standing left, sacrificing from patera over tripod-altar References: RIC II 2326, RCV 3550 Attractively toned with a fine portrait. The reverse of this coin depicts Hadrian performing one of his many duties as Emperor - offering votive sacrifices on behalf of the public well-being (VOTA PVBLICA).

That is fascinating! I had no idea that Rome issued Alexandrian coins like these. Thanks for sharing!

That is a terrific specimen @kirispupis! Great to see you branching out into Roman coins. 😉 Here is my only Nero denarius, from the other end of his reign: NERO, AD 54-68 AR Denarius (17.24mm, 3.47g, 7h) Struck AD 68. Rome mint Obverse: IMP NERO CAESAR AVG P P, laureate head of Nero right Reverse: Legionary eagle between two standards References: RIC I 68, RCV 1947 A scarce type. Lightly toned with an excellent portrait. From the T. R. Hardaker Collection (1942-2019) "This type, among the last coins struck by the very unmilitary Nero, would seem to be an attempt to curry favor with the Roman legions of the provinces, which were beginning to rebel against his capricious rule. It did not work." - Classical Numismatic Group (lot description)

Thank you for the kind words! Your photo background idea looks/sounds neat. I've often thought it would be cool to try to photograph ancient coins as they might have appeared in ancient times - in a scene with props, etc. The trick would be getting the right balance of subject/background. Lovely coins, by the way!

If those are normal-sized dollar bills, yes. But in that case the burglars must be about 3 feet tall. 😆

Thank you! Both of your coins are remarkable - the denarius portrait especially. I agree that Severus Alexander's sideburns must have made a deep impression on whoever engraved that die. 😄

Lovely landscaping @panzerman - and that torte looks delicious!

That's interesting! We used to have a CO2 laser, but now all we have are fiber lasers. Fiber is just so much faster than CO2 and way more efficient. Of course, they're more expensive up front, too. As a matter of fact, I'm doing an etching job right now on our smallest laser, a 6KW which probably cost somewhere around $600K. 😉 These are stainless steel parts:

Nice! It's always fun to discover new and interesting aspects to coins already in your collection. That happened to me with this coin here: SICILY, SYRACUSE Time of Agathokles, 317-289 BC AE14 (14.22mm, 2.14g, 7h) Struck 305-295 BC Obverse: Head of Athena left, wearing crested Corinthian helmet Reverse: ΣΥΡΑ-ΚΟΣΙΩΝ above and below winged thunderbolt References: CNS 118, Favorito 38a (this coin illustrated) Attractive green patina. This coin is the illustrated plate coin in Emilo N. Favorito’s reference manual "The Bronze Coinage of Ancient Syracuse", published in 1990 by the Society Historia Numorum. Notated as being from the collection of Favorito himself. I bought this coin in a group lot with little to no description, and only much later found that it is actually a plate coin. I now own a copy of Favorito's reference catalog, which itself happens to be autographed by the author for one of the contributors.