Jump to content

Severus Alexander

Supporter
  • Posts

    1,113
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    9

Severus Alexander last won the day on July 9 2023

Severus Alexander had the most liked content!

Recent Profile Visitors

The recent visitors block is disabled and is not being shown to other users.

Severus Alexander's Achievements

Grand Master

Grand Master (14/14)

  • One Year In
  • Posting Machine
  • One Month Later
  • Well Followed Rare
  • Week One Done

Recent Badges

8.7k

Reputation

  1. Wow, that Maximian struck under DD is the best I've seen! Congrats!! I especially love the nice plump eagle. 😄 (That style eagle seems to correlate with officina gamma.) Here's my set (except for DD himself!):
  2. That's a truly beautiful portrait of Athena, @Curtisimo, and what a fascinating writeup! I'm particularly interested in the early history of the Olympians even though it's hard to conclude much with any certainty. (Maybe that's why I find the subject so fascinating!) I think my two favourite portraits of Athena are on this diobol from Thurium: and on this Leukas stater (which I don't have in hand yet): I like these facing portraits issued by Antiochos I too: (@Ryro, let's see that awesome animation again!!) For full-length depictions, maybe I'd pick this Bactrian drachm: or this Gigantomachy depiction on a big provincial of Gordian III from Seleukeia ad Kalykadnon:
  3. Excellent!! I'm very happy all three coins will be going to good homes. 😊 I'll aim to post a wrap-up comment later today.
  4. Okeedoke, I'll do my best... though I fear that we greybeards form more than our fair share of the pool! 😆 Here goes... The basilikon is all yours, @mc9, should you choose to accept it!
  5. OK, now for the final prize. Surprisingly (at least to me) the most valuable coin in monetary terms is the last to be chosen! This lovely (if partly flat-struck) basilikon: will go to a thread participant who had 9 ballots or fewer (as per the rules in post #1). Here are those participants, with their ballot numbers: And random.org chooses: Coingrats, @Edessa!! If I'm not mistaken, the coin fits pretty well with your collection. Let us know if you intend to keep it or pass it on in some way. All three coins are ex my collection, so I'll include their flip inserts, complete with my snazzy collection logo... which happens to be Byzantine themed! 😄
  6. That's wonderful... I'm sure they will greatly appreciate it! Congrats again! 🙂 I wish I could have included you, I really enjoyed the coins you showed us! It wasn't the lack of contributions to our thread, not at all. Instead one of the rules was that to be included in the balloting a participant had to have made at least 50 posts outside this thread. That is, the contest was intended for those who have proven themselves significant Numisforums contributors... something I'm sure you'll do before long.
  7. Congrats again, @Nerosmyfavorite68, I hope you enjoy the coin! BTW I only tagged you (instead of pm'ing), so it wasn't a pm problem. 🙂 That said, be sure to pm me your address so I can send you your prize. (I won't miss your message because my settings are such that I get an email whenever I receive a pm... highly recommended!) AND... on to the next one! Congratulations!! It's about time one of our pre-eminent numismatists won something, don't you think? @Valentinian, let us know if you'd like one of the two remaining coins, or if you'd rather assign your prize to someone else or redraw. Here's what's left:
  8. Sorry for the extra day's wait! My excuse is the NHL season is starting and my Flames were playing last night... you'll be pleased to know they trounced Vancouver 10-0!! 😄 I used random.org to draw from our total of 302 ballots. The ballots were assigned as follows, in accordance with the list I posted a few days ago: Congratulations, @Nerosmyfavorite68! Which of the following coins do you want most? Since ID work is at least half the fun of collecting I've provided only minimal information (there's a tiny bit more on p.1 where the prizes were initially announced). If you have a question, though, don't hesitate to ask. As per usual with these things, prizewinners always have the option to offer their prize to someone else, e.g. a beginner collector or young numismatist. You may also request that I redraw from the pool of participants who had 10 ballots or fewer. Once @Nerosmyfavorite68 has made his choice, I'll draw for the next prize.
  9. Fantastic!! Note that Fox’s remarks are still consistent with a pre-Roman date (after all, we know the smaller denomination existed then too e.g. in Seleukid coinage). Even if it’s Roman it would likely be early i.e. Republican.
  10. This Naumann coin appears to be a 1427, officina gamma: Leu sold a lovely 1426 last year: In retrospect I wish I had bid on that coin!
  11. After reading the whole thread I’m also inclined to think it’s a fantasy. But I want to add one other theory to the mix since a fantasy ex nihilo seems so unlikely, what with the surfaces and testimony of later alteration. Overstrikes can produce some puzzling coins. The bull reminds me most of the Seleukid type introduced by Seleukos I: What if that were overstruck by e.g. this Dionysos type of Alexander Balas? Maybe you could get those leaves appearing out of context. Both coins come in a variety of styles so could maybe produce the somewhat cherubic look of the OP coin. (Both coins are the right size, too.) That leaves the odd reverse legend to explain. My suggestion there is that the mess produced by the overstrike was “restored” (i.e. tooled) into its present form, along with some smoothing to reduce the evidence of overstriking. That would fit with what the dealer said. It’s quite likely that the two types I’ve chosen here aren’t the best ones to represent the general idea, but I wanted to put it out there in case someone else can improve upon it. I do think the Seleukid bull is the best match for the reverse, other than the legend of course. Maybe a later Seleukid bull type was overstruck on a Dionysos coin, i.e. I’ve got the order wrong. There are other Dionysos coin possibilities, and the Seleukid bull motif was used later e.g. by Selekos II. The bull was paired with heads other than Medusa as well, e.g. Apollo: The cleaner lines of the head of Apollo might fit better than the complex Medusa. Anyway, you get the idea! @kirispupis, it seems to me there are some indications on the coin that overstriking is a possibility. What do you think? P.S. I hadn’t seen John’s suggestion or the later discussion just now. I will add that there are examples of the bull type fitting the size and weight criteria e.g. http://numismatics.org/sco/id/sc.1.23 .
  12. Wow, that coin looks like a 3D relief of an alien moon! I immediately think of Chinese coins for this sort of thing. Definitely some sort of crystally thangs going on here, on this early Chinese bronze cowrie: Must be some interesting minerals on this heavy (9.45g) early Qin ban liang, c. 350-300 BCE: And for a different sort of adhesion, check out the actual ancient fabric at the top of the reverse of this Han ban liang (H7.17, c. 175-120 BCE):
  13. With that suggested search, you're #1 for me on both Bing and DuckDuckGo. On Google you don't even show up! 😠 That strengthens my resolve to continue not using Google as my go-to search engine. Random post-1204 Byzantine: John Comnenus-Ducas of Thessalonica (1237-42) O AΓIOC ΘEO St. Theodore standing facing, holding spear and shield; to left, lis. Rev. John standing facing, holding labarum and akakia, being crowned by St. Demetrius. DOC 15. SB 2200. Flattened.
  14. I saw that one! Glad I didn't bid you up on it. I decided I didn't need a full follis to add to my half that I picked up earlier this year: These second reign coins are tough to find at a reasonable cost, it's quite right to call them rare (whether featuring Justinian alone or with his son Tiberius). I'm not sure if Sol is also talking about the rarity of the officina mark... only a super specialist would care much about that I think. That said, the officina mark does offer something of special interest: the retrograde R before the gamma, which is very clear on your example. I wonder what the explanation for this is!
  15. Almost draw time. (See the first post to refresh your memory about the three prizes.) According to my calculations, four people exceeded 30 portraits and so got the maximum number of ballots: @Hrefn, @sand, @Valentinian and @voulgaroktonou. (Four extraordinary collections!!) Otherwise, the ballot counts are as follows: @Al Kowsky: 16 @Ancient Coin Hunter: 12 @Broucheion: 4 @CPK: 1 @Edessa: 5 @ewomack: 12 @Jims,Coins: 25 @John Conduitt: 1 @mc9: 9 @Nerosmyfavorite68: 17 @Octavius: 1 @O-Towner: 2 @Pellinore: 6 @Prieure de Sion: 1 @quant.geek: 2 @Rand: 9 @robinjojo: 12 @Simon: 22 @TheTrachyEnjoyer: 2 @ValiantKnight: 4 @wittwolff: 19 If you think I've made a mistake, let me know. (There should be one ballot per legally played individual, portraits only). Remember that you can assign your prize to another Numisforums member, or ask me to redraw from the pool of players who have fewer than 10 ballots. In any case the third prize will be from that pool of less broadly experienced Byzantinists. (Hmm... that description doesn't really apply to @quant.geek or @TheTrachyEnjoyer!) I'll leave this up for a couple days and then make the first draw sometime on Sunday. The first winner can choose from any of the 3 prize coins. (If someone wishes to add to the prize pool they're more than welcome to do so, just post a photo of the coin below.)
×
×
  • Create New...