Severus Alexander

Well, if you remember this coin of mine you knew it was coming... Acquired in trade decades ago from CNG... for a rather worn Caligula denarius! 😲 No regrets! (Wish I also had an Antioch beauty like @Curtisimo though!)

I think Thomas Madden confirms this account in Venice: A New History. (Great book!)

When multiple flyspeckers have money it's gonna happen! Nice dupondius, @Steve! Here's mine, Hilaritas though: Crispina is cuter on your coin though, isn't she? 😞

Great coin!! It seems to be a very scarce type... do you know the date of issue? is it from immediately following the reconquest? I have a Carthage pentanummium that is somewhat similar, though much more common and without the awesome chi-rho on his breast. I think Justinian looks cute on these: I also have a great fondness for the cartoonish art we sometimes see from the late 6th and early 7th centuries at Cyzicus and Nicomedia. There's something incredibly appealing about these to me! Some samples: Mournful Maurice from Cyzicus, year 8 (I feel so sorry for him!! 😭) : Heraclius year 1 Nicomedia (aka Hagar the Horrible is ticked!) : Heraclius year 2, Cyzicus ("ski goggles Heraclius") : I think this goggles-style from Cyzicus is hilarious (maybe derived from the Maurice style above?) and recently got this year 3 half to complement my full follis: At that high grade I do indeed find this coin to be truly beautiful! Go figure.

Welcome, @Panumismatic! Your owl looks great!! 🙂 Sorry about the repressive collecting laws in Greece. 😞 I happen to have just posted a comment in another thread that bears on how things ought to be in this respect:

I think it’s complicated. First, what are the facts? They say that the third most money for armed groups in the Middle East comes from “the plunder and sale of antiquities,” and that it’s continuing despite the waning presence of these groups. Then they link an article as evidence, which says “some estimates put it at billions of dollars a year”… with a dead link. 😐 It would be nice to have some hard facts about this, but almost anything I’ve read is trying to promote an agenda. Second, what’s the goal? How do we really want things to be? I think we’d probably all agree the UK Portable Antiquities Scheme has been a smashing success. All sorts of excellent data are recorded, finders benefit, collectors benefit, museums benefit, archaeologists benefit. It’s awesome. So the goal should be to make that the international standard, no? I think some archaeologists might say “No, no, no! Only we get to do that because we’re the only ones who are competent to dig!” Sure, let’s all wait while you transfer the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific using an eyedropper. (Or not.) So how do we get there, eventually? What measures are justified? Well that’s a pretty huge question. I think we’d all agree that funding terrorism through the antiquities trade is something that should be stopped asap. And illegal looting of past or ongoing archaeological digs. This might justify temporary extreme measures like the proposal in the article. On the other hand, what about poor Ahmad in Eastern Turkey who digs up some stuff on unused, ignored land and sells it to feed his family? In a country where they don’t give a damn about that particular archaeological context and will never allow or fund a dig there in a million years? Where they have stupid, draconian laws against export that are about as far from the smoothly-running PAS as the German train system is from the chaotic streets of ancient Rome? I don’t know about you but I have a heck of a lot of sympathy for Ahmad. Words like “pillage,” “theft,” “looted,” and “illicit” get thrown around a lot, but what do they really correspond to in the real world in particular cases? Often the terms are drastically misapplied, I suspect. One thing that clearly needs to happen is that Turkey et al. need to be pressured to adopt something like the PAS. The recent MOUs etc. are not helping with this as far as I can tell. Back to how to stop fueling terrorism… one good point the article makes is that there’s a big problem with “the presence of freeports (places to store shipments that are essentially jurisdictional black holes) in places like Geneva or Dubai.” (I’m reminded of tax havens…) But here is another place where governments can put pressure to require documentation – PAS type documentation – before export is allowed. Find the bottlenecks and apply a choke-hold if you need action asap. So I think it’s a policy question and right now I don’t see much movement in the right directions. It would be nice if collectors and archaeologists could talk to one another and get together on this, because if we can agree on the ultimate PAS type goal maybe we can actually make some progress!

I've always thought that type was super cool! Coingrats! Some things not yet in the thread: Quarter shekel minted in Carthago Nova, some say the portrait is Hannibal: A little later, AE unit, either at the very end of the Punic occupation or issued by the Romans immediately after. Again, "some say" this depicts Scipio: According to Crawford, this coin (C. Postumius, c. 74 BCE, Cr. 394/1a) was issued to pay Pompey's soldiers when he was taking on Sertorius in Spain: A Spanish imitation semis, c. 50-10 BCE: And a Civil War issue by Galba, Tarraco mint: Since you asked for Islamic too, here's 'Abd al-Rahman III (912-961), the Umayyad in Al Andalus who proclaimed a separate caliphate:

You guys have amazing talent. Actual footage of me trying to deal with a forum (not this one, but same-same) on my phone:

Coingrats on the new scores! (Did you see that Salonina SPQR go for it?!) Sole reign silvered Gallienus, first from Rome mint, second from Antioch:

My main collection aims for an overall view of world history from 500 BCE to 1500 CE. (Well, only where coins were issued of course!) I make checklists of important polities/people/events and try to get a coin to represent them. You can see most of my spreadsheet sheets at the top here, and part of my medieval to modern Europe list (mostly I don't bother going past 1500). A dark grey fill in a cell means "essential, need to get!!" But within those checklists there's still a lot of scope, so I can sort-of magpie it anyway; and if I like a particular area I might get more than one example. (Just bought another sceat, for example!) Plus if I see a coin that's just super cool of course there will be a way for me to fit it into my historical scheme, right?! 😆 I pay a lot of attention to price... I hate to "overpay" compared to the market. I never just "pull the trigger." I do have a few "specialist" series I'm after where I'm willing to do this. Plus a few essential slots left to fill in my original Rome/Byzantium emperor set where I might be willing to pay slightly over market if I have to. Coin, along with my nearly completed Seleukid checklist: Demetrios II Nikator. Second reign, 129-125 BC. AR Tetradrachm (27mm, 16.69 g, 1h). Antioch mint. Struck 129-128 BC. Diademed and bearded head right / Zeus Nikephoros seated left; Ξ to outer left, O below throne. SC 2166.2c; HGC 9, 1117b. That checklist nicely illustrates how I can magpie things. Antiochos IX wasn't originally on the list (you can tell, I switched to Greek spelling!), but I saw a cool coin for cheap so I bought it and added him in. 😏 This coin:

Owls say: "...? dat an owl?" 😲

Nor Canadians (though of course we speak Brit too). Little known fact outside of Canada: here we call 'em "parkades." 🇨🇦

My Athenian owl family so far: Four of these 5 are very rare. Pretty easy to tell which by their condition! 😆

Best little bear ever!! Do you call him Pooh? 🐻

Phenomenal coin @DonnaML, congrats!! Both sides are awesome. That aegis is amazing! Here's a coin I bought for the interesting armour, Marcianopolis rather than Nicopolis, and for Commodus: That's Athena on the breastplate. (Coin is a decent size too, 26mm and 9.42g.) I think it's shameful how inaccurate many auction houses' photos of AEs are. I think they just cycle them through trying to make them look nice without even comparing the final photo to the coin itself! Good on HJB for providing that video. Here are a couple Macrinus, a denarius (terrible seller photo) and an As, the latter not so easy to come by:

Well at least that gives us access to the larger image. (In a pretty appealing way, too.) Still, it would be nice to be able to upload such things here on occasion too.

I think this is probably the biggest apparent limitation I've found with this site so far. Kinda weird given that the max total size for attachments on one post is huge. Maybe there's a setting somewhere that allows you to individually override the automatic image compression? Or what happens if you link an image instead of attaching it? Does that solve the problem? In which case we'll want to be doing that with our higher-res stuff when needed. (Usually not needed, but sometimes...) @Restitutor, @dougsmit, @TIF Let me try linking a random large image: That should be 5,951 × 3,960 pixels. [[edit: Duh, somehow I missed that Doug already tried this experiment.]]

Perfect solution, thanks!

Oh good! Actually, even better than that, I think... here's what it looks like: Someone commented above that it would be nice not to have to specify a price at all, and it looks like that's what this means. "If you do not want a price shown, just add 0." So for free stuff we put "Free" in the title, but for something like a list of several coins with different prices we would just enter 0 and put the prices in the text/images - is that right? Here's another screenshot, on condition: I really don't think specifying condition should be required. There are not a few of us who think condition on ancients slabs is nonsense, for example. 🤓 I'm just full of advice today, aren't I? My excuse is I'm on a high dose of steroids for immunotherapy side effects... your patience is appreciated... ☺️

I suspect they used the old AEs, which became quite worn. Scarce to collectors today may just mean they were far less likely to make it through 2000 years. Nobody hoarded small change, after all. Kenneth Harl makes the same point about Asses during the first couple centuries of the empire. They were workaday coins, common and in constant use, but a far smaller percentage of them made it to our time than the precious metal coinage. I wonder to what extent old AE’s were melted down and the metal reused by the mint?

They’re yours, buddy! Will pm! 👍

Suggestion: a free stuff/giveaways category. (Anybody want my run of old Celators??)

In the regular forums, you mean. Yes, but maybe based on reputation score instead of post count. I for one would be strongly in favour of a requirement for a minimum “reputation” count before you get to post ads at all. That could solve quite a few potential problems. And the number of ads you can post could vary with support level. Right now “supporter” doesn’t get you much.

Very cool!! Great that the service is free too. I think this new feature will be very successful! A few random thoughts: I guess we’ll have to see if there’s a problem with people signing up as members only to place a bunch of garbage ads nobody is interested in, crowding out the legit members’ ads. I’m hopeful that won’t happen, at least not for a long while anyway. Of course pinning the higher donors’ ads helps with that problem. Something to monitor, anyway. Maybe the categories will need refining over time. Probably good to reflect the subforums. I agree with @FitzNigel, but would make the category “non-western” for now. (Eliminating Islamic.) Overlaps: Tricky. What does “medieval” mean? Someone might post a medieval Islamic coin there. What about some pick-bin categories for cheap stuff? Probably what I would recommend is something along the lines of the AMCC categories I used - of course!! 😁 They did work very well though: Greek Persian/Parthian/Sasanian etc. Other western (Celtic, Carthage, etc.) Roman Provincial Roman Republican and Imperatorial Roman Imperial Byzantine & Crusader Medieval Europe India and Central Asia Islamic China World Pick-bin: Greek etc. Pick-bin: Roman & Byzantine Pick-bin: Medieval & Modern Europe Pick-bin: Eastern (Persia to China) Probably would make sense to add a World pick-bin, and divide world up a bit. I suppose it’s OK to have a U.S. category as long as it doesn’t make it into the subforums too. They have enough venues and I think it’s really important that Numisforums be emphatically not a U.S. coin site. Of course some members do both so a small sales category is OK.

I was hoping someone would ask my question so I wouldn't have to. Alas, it's come down to me. It's about the archaic diobols: is the satyr, erm, wanking? or just... what? 🤪 I don't have one but if he IS wanking I think I ought to get one! To post a coin: