Severus Alexander

I'd better sneak these in before regime change! First, the easy choices. My favourite Galeria Valeria: (An ex Dattari coin, I still need to take my own photo of it. I regret not buying more in the series of ex Dattari sales that Vico held. Nice to see your Galerius example, @DonnaML!) My favourite Severus II portrait is an easy pick too. As is often the case, there's something appealing about his Lugdunum portraits: They were best buds! 🙂 Galerius is trickier for me. Candidates include this Antioch follis (also ex Dattari): This Heraclea as Augustus: This Trier Moneta: And finally this Rome argenteus: Looking at all four just now I can rule out the Antioch as overly generic, and I'm leaning towards the argenteus. But maybe I'm biased by the silver and toning!

I'd like to someone's example from Augustus! (dupondius or sestertius) Here's a sestertius and two dupondii that show the yellow pretty well:

My earliest Janapada coin is this one, from the Vatsa Janapada, ruled by Udayana who became one of the Buddha's earliest followers. This coin is a variant of Rajgor Series 78 type 1210, c. 500-400 BCE: One of my favourite auction wins from last year is this Maitreya Buddha issued by the Buddhist Kushan monarch Kanishka I (127-152 CE). These coins are among the first depictions of the Buddha: The Northern Wei (386-535) were the first to create wide acceptance of Buddhism in China. This coin is H13.26, Yong an wu zhu: I had forgotten this story, @shanxi! Here's my example of H15.12:

I have a bunch of portraits of Constantius I that I really like. My current favourite is probably this Cyzicus follis: Runners up... Compared to what we usually see on Alexandrian tetradrachms under the tetrarchy, I think this portrait is remarkably lifelike: I also love this baby-faced follis, issued under Domitius Domitianus: A stylized long-necked London portrait: Leftie Lugdunum (thank you, @Qcumbor!!): And finally this post-reform radiate from Heraclea, ex the @kapphnwn collection!

Cookie Monster says Ptolemaic because of the yummy octobols!! (But I gotta agree with the other posters that there's a more appealing variety in Seleukid coinage. Better portraits too... here's my Demetrios I tet: And my Antiochos I drachm:

Wow, fabulous score!!! Huge coingratulations!!! I'm thinking there must not be many slots left to fill in your Augusti/Caesars/Divo/other issuers collection that are obtainable for less than 1K... Since you mentioned overstrikes, here's an Etruscus overstruck on a Plautilla denarius, oriented so you can see the ghostly Plautilla portrait in its natural position: And here's his bro as Augustus. He lasted a bit longer in the position under T-bone:

Nic II’s are among my favourite portraits in Byzantine copper, that’s a great one! I got a similar coin from Naumann a few years ago: (This is SB 1782. Note that yours is 1783, with the cross and trefoil ornament on the globus. @quant.geek shows both. Are you sure the “Heraclius” isn’t a Maurice, SB 494? Like these (not my coins): The bearded look on yours could easily be explained by a little roughness and sketchy strike, plus I don’t see a cross in evidence above, looks more like a helmet crest. Without some definitive legend I wouldn’t be confident of the ID… and the Maurice is more common.

I think that's Lady Catherine de Bourgh on the reverse of your new Theo! "I take no leave of you, Miss. Bennet. I send no compliments to your mother. You deserve no such attention. I am most seriously displeased." (That reverse is priceless, I love it!) My Roman siliquae: Constantius II: Valens (Arelate as Constantina, rather scarce): Gratian: This Eugenius is my most recent acquisition:

My Carausius is early-ish London mint, probably with very low silver content: And I have one of the Allectus galley types: Me too! Very interesting question (as for pretty much all the denomination/valuation questions from around this time.) Ken Elks makes an interesting point on his site here. Re: the proposal that the Q-radiates/galley coins were equal to half an aurelianus: So maybe the Q-radiate is worth a quarter of an aurelianus instead. (=a denarius? Weird that it would be radiate, then.) But did Allectus's aureliani still adhere to the roughly 4% aurelianus standard? Burnett suggests not (as you quoted, "the 'quinarii' of Allectus had 1-2 per cent silver, not very much indeed, but apparently as much as his 'antoniniani' ever contained." [my italics]) On a quick look I can't find a source to confirm this. Given that Allectus was hard-pressed due to the invasion by Constantius it wouldn't be surprising if he reduced the silver content of his billon coins, in which case the 1/2-aurelianus idea (= one old antoninianus?) could still hold water. (I like this idea myself.) One general question I have about these issues concerns surface vs. general silver content. The XXI issues of Aurelian (true "aureliani") clearly have high-silver-content surfaces. In measures of silver content, are these surfaces properly taken into account? Referring back to your quote from Burnett: If this is true, the average silver content of the half-denomination would need to be less than the average silver content of the whole-denomination for the total silver content to maintain a 1:2 ratio. Now consider the diameters: Q-radiate diameter =~19mm, XXI aurelianus diameter =~23mm (for Carausius, at least). That corresponds to about 1.5x the surface area on the larger coin, which could make a major difference to what the silver content would need to be interior to the coins. It would depend on what proportion of the silver the surface is contributing vs. the interior of the coin.* Overall, the greater the silver contribution the surface makes (proportionally), the bigger the contrast we'd expect between the silver concentrations found in the interiors of the larger vs. smaller denomination. In short, it seems to me that we'd really need to know how much silver is on the surface of mint-condition examples.** Do we know this? I doubt it, just because our sample size is probably too small. (Calling @Valentinian, who may know the answer.) * In all cases: the surface of the smaller coin contributes 1 unit of silver, and the surface of the larger coin contributes 1.5 units of silver. Case 1: suppose the interior contributes relatively little silver, say 0.1 units for the smaller coin. That would correspond to 0.7 units of silver for the interior of the larger coin... seven times that of the smaller one. We'd expect the silver concentration inside the smaller coin to be quite a bit lower than that inside the larger one. Contrast that with a case where the interior contributes most of the silver, say 4 units for the smaller coin. That would correspond to 8.5 units for the interior of the larger coin, only a little more than twice that of the smaller one. ** Strictly speaking, we'd also need to know how the surfaces were enriched. The aureliani look plated, and I've seen a paper suggesting that Hg traces indicate a silver amalgam was used to do this. This surface enrichment process adds silver in this case. What about late antoniniani, e.g. late Gallienus? Maybe their surfaces are enriched just through metal flow upon striking, i.e. the enrichment process just moves silver to the outside of the coin, it doesn't add any. The enriched surface corresponds to an impoverished subsurface; between the two, their average silver content is the same as at the centre of the coin - we could just measure that.

Ah, I see! Maybe somebody here has a tip for you so this won't be a problem. (Maybe you can make the template higher resolution or something? or just paste on the logo to the original image?) In the meantime, I agree, the videos are excellent. 👍

@YOTHR, in some of your photos I notice what looks like a post-processing "smoothing" effect, which is particularly evident on this photo of the Paduan 3 sisters coin. (Does anybody else know what I mean? It seems to reduce reflectiveness too. Maybe it's an image compression thing? I dunno...) Personally I think the photos would look much better without this effect, which I think makes the surfaces look unnatural. [I trust that this feedback is desired/well-received ... but if not I can delete this comment.]

Check your messages. (If anyone else wants a copy, just let me know.)

My favourite Max portrait is a new one for me, this London nummus: That is a look of determination, no? 😄 I have some others that I like too. For antoniniani, I have both the Ticinum issue that @CPK shows as well as the Lugdunum that @Shea19 posted: For folles, I like this Carthage (also for its particularly disgusting looking "fruits" on the reverse!): This scarcer 2nd reign portrait from Lugdunum (c. 308) is kind of neat, despite the coin's problems... and the extraordinarily large ear! Finally, here's a silly one from Rome. He's thinking "What?!? You've got to be *#&%ing kidding me!!" 😆

Dammit! 😆 And I actually ID'd the Aria mint coin first (correctly), before looking at the fake. And deleted that info when discovering the even greater interest (or so I thought!) of the muled coin. Was the fake identified as such in the listing? Coingrats on the acquisition, @Parthicus! I look forward to seeing the individual photo.

It must be the top left coin... what tipped me off is that "ΕΠΙΦΑΝΥΣ" isn't right for Sinatrukes (leftmost part of the legend). Looking into it further had me go WOW!! 🤯 It appears to be an extremely rare and important mule issue with an obverse of Sinatrukes and reverse of Mithradates II, and a die match for the Sellwood example sold in 2015. There's an interesting discussion of the implications of the mule at the link, and a reference to a paper by Assar. They wouldn't have put that in a group lot had they noticed, I assume. Did anyone else notice? i.e. did you get it for a steal? Here's my common Mithradates II from the Rhagae mint with a similar reverse:

Because he's so important both historically and numismatically I have a lot of Diocletian. So I'll get creative with my "best of" categories to squeeze 5 coins in. 🙂 Best portrait on an antoninianus: ^ This was actually issued by Carausius at the mysterious C mint. Runner-up (antoninianus portrait): ^ One of Diocletian's first portraits, issued in 284 in Antioch, before he elevated his buddy Maximianus (thus AVG rather than AVGG on the reverse). Now for the folles/nummi. Best "good cop" portrait (Siscia, first issue): ^ All smiles! Best "bad cop" portrait (Cyzicus 2nd issue): ^ Super grumpy. 😤 Best "neutral cop" chiselled anonymous-looking tetrarchal portrait (Antioch c. 302-3): ^ An ex-Dattari coin with its typical "Dattari toning," as I've dubbed it.

I hope everyone noticed that this is Julian of Pannonia! 👍👍

I have the same Lugdunum issue as @Octavius's beauty. The mottled patination makes it difficult to photograph: As usual, the Lugdunum portraits are the most lifelike. But I also quite like the (very different, more abstract) portrait on this ex-Dattari coin from Cyzicus: From Rome, here's one as Caesar (only one I have!) and a rarely seen denarius:

I love these and regret that they tend to be so pricey! Here's the little group I've assembled on the cheap, half Continental and half British: I still need a Northumbrian styca or two.

For those following this thread full of dazzling coins, and despairing of getting an affordable Visigothic example for your collection, I present the following tiny AE: Uncertain king after 610. Æ nummus (6mm, 0.23 g, 12h). Ispalis (Seville) mint. Large SP / Cross set on two steps. Crusafont, Visigoda Group A, Type 2. This is the smallest AE coin in my collection. While the opposite of dazzling, it does have the virtue of being affordable! 😁

My best Numerian portrait is one of the Luxuriant Locks Ticinum coins. I see there are a number of fans of this style among earlier posters!

... and sometimes not malum at all! 🙃

It's not out of collectors' hands. It's up to us to defend the right to collect and to criticize terrible antiquities laws outside our own countries plus any support for those laws that our own countries offer. It's also up to us to promote the best alternatives, along the lines of what we see in the UK (but preferably better funded). Certainly Greece and Turkey have the right to protect their cultural heritage, but not by any means whatsoever. For example, the draconian prison sentences (and horrific prisons) we see in Turkey are atrocious. I've yet to see a cogent defense of the absolute prohibition type approach they're using. Even putting aside human rights violations, this does a terrible job of protecting their heritage. They have an abundant resource which they've made literally impossible for their citizens to profit from legally. That approach just encourages looting. Moreover, Turkey (at least) doesn't even care about much of this "heritage" as they're busy promoting alternate history which disparages anything pre-Turkish, going so far as to persecute academics and arrest journalists who disagree, and encourage the destruction of sites that might conflict with their official view. This is simply criminal... and any support for this in the form of MOU's is clearly wrong. I'm not saying that your use of "illegal" in referring to the Athenian tetradrachm hoard was meant to support these bad laws. I'm just saying that we need to be careful in throwing the term "illegal" around, when the laws contravened are probably bad ones that need to be changed.

They'll ship for less (uninsured) if you ask! I bought this coin because of your earlier post on these. Thanks!

This should always be put as "which are illegal to export under objectionable or at least highly questionable Turkish antiquities laws." It's up to other countries – and individuals! – whether they respect those unjust laws or not. When a persecuted minority escapes from an oppressive régime, Canada and most other countries don't just lie down and say "oh well, it's illegal for us to harbour you, we have to send you back. Sorry!" Too often (including in this thread) I see collectors just lie down and accept that these coins are "illegal" in some false objective sense, as though any country can determine how things ought to be just by legislating them. Sorry to keep harping on this, but it's important.