Severus Alexander

Awesome, @Shea19, I've only seen one I like better! 🤓 Although yours is better in one important respect, which you point out: two clear portraits. Congrats, not at all easy to find!! However @TIF pointed out there was a period in Gallienus's life when his personal adornment habits were rather unorthodox, so I suppose it's just an accurate portrait, eh? I'm not sure a flip-over double has to be the result of the mint workers intentionally wanting to restrike, with the flip the only accidental part. I imagine it's possible for the coin to flip over accidentally simply during striking (due to the blow) and then getting struck again (a second accident) rather than being replaced by a new blank. I have a few Gallienus errors. Brockage: Ordinary double strike: Then there's this weird item from the Cologne mint. Weighing a colossal 6.29g(!!) it's actually the product of a striking error where two flans stuck together: So a double antoninianus before Tacitus! 😄 I have lots of other errors but I'll stop at Gallienus before I lose you...

Syracuse retrograde: Just gimme a sec to pick the next topic... Oh, and since we missed Ephesos! (Great score btw @TuckHard, much better than Ephesos!) (387-295 BC. Aissides, magistrate, 2.02 g, 14 mm. Ε-Φ, bee. [ΑΙΣΣΙΔΗΣ] stag kneeling left, head right, astragalos above Oh, and superb photo with your new macro lens, @Restitutor!! 😍 Next: headless in some way

The problem with many of the standard social media platform options (FB, reddit, discord, twitter, etc.) as opposed to a forum is the terrible lack of organization (threads, quoting, image posting etc. just doesn't work as well). That's why CT was so great for me. Forvm became old and clunky (I hardly used it), plus I preferred the more informal atmosphere at CT. (Lots of great old threads at Forvm though!) But NumisForums promises to surpass them all easily, for pre-milled collectors at least (with world being the niche instead of the other way around, and U.S. coins basically absent). Which is good, we need our own place. It's slick, well organized, friendly, and its norms seem to be brought about through cooperation rather than top-heavy mods. The organization, where you can choose which forum topics to browse, is excellent and most welcome. In short I'm thrilled with the new place and I'm sure it will continue to be a smashing success. I really like this forum but it's too inactive for me to think to check it regularly; also a bit clunky/old style. I wonder if @Victor Clark might be interested in migrating it here in some way? Maybe not as a subforum (like the checkbox things we already have: Ancient Greek, Ancient Roman etc.) but something a little more separate, though still within NumisForums? (Is there such a thing available here, @Restitutor? Might be useful for other purposes too.) I think it would get a lot more action.

And the REAL reason @Ryro left "the other place" comes out! 😆 Um, I have a few things to contribute I think. Septimius Severus, Nicopolis with Priapos reverse: (But @TIF's Elagabalus is... well, much better!) My erector set also contains this rare A. Pi from Lampsakos. It's amazing after all the wear and tear he is still keepin' it up: A tooled tool (not my coin!) : Probably my hottest babe other than my wife (Aurora, that is, not the Gorgon...). Plautius Plancus c. 47 BCE: The one that got away (eh @Ryro?) : I'll conclude with some auction listings I've enjoyed: Some classics from Frank Robinson:

Wow, what a fantastic coin @Tejas! I just have PROBVS INV AVG: I don't think there's any doubt that the transition to the Dominate wasn't sudden... court protocol and access to the emperor were already pretty burdensome before Diocletian came along.

That bulgy weiner Vespasian portrait slays me, @Ryro!! 🤣 Many of you have seen my lowly worm Phocas, the height of Byzantine portraiture: In Carthage they believed Justin II was the spitting image of Mick Jagger (this is a half siliqua) : Here's my favourite die break: The later Bosporan Kingdom portraits often give a chuckle too. Here's Rhescuporis VI (308-342) with his buddy Constantine the Great. I kind of doubt the latter approved the portrait before production time: Fun thread! Salut!

What a fabulous post, thank you! I like you covered a lot of ground informatively but economically. More please. 😄 Here's my Hui Zong slender gold 10 wen/cash which has always been one of my favourite Chinese coins: I actually really like the archaic calligraphy on this Qi yi hua too (late 4th c. - 220 BCE): My Wang Mang spade: Cheng Zu (1403-24) yong le tong bao: And some Mongol phagspa that you mentioned (Yuan: Wu Zong / Khaishan, 1308-1311): Moving on to Islamic calligraphy, here's another Mongol coin, from the Chaghatayids: Qazan Timur, AH 744-747 / AD 1343-1346, 31mm AR Dinar. The Chaghatayids aren't really known for high production values but I think the calligraphy on this is quite beautiful: Arghun (1284-1291) of the Ilkans, not too shabby: Some of the best Islamic calligraphy is Indian, but I don't have any of the really amazing stuff. Here's one of the first rupees, of Sher Shah Suri (1538-1545, Mughal, well sort of anyway) : And much later, Furrukhsiyar (1713-1719), very elegant: Looking forward to your next post on Chinese coins!

Many of the Mesopotamian mints produced some mighty silly looking portraits, I love both of your examples... especially your new one: dynastic, awesome!! I have zero Mesopotamian coins to show. 😞 I can show a silly portrait of Sep Sev, though (from Decapolis/Petra in Arabia Petraea): Like the Mesopotamian coins, these coins from Decapolis come in two fairly distinct, good and bad style. I wonder what's up with that pattern? I do have an Old Babylonian seal, c. 1900-1750 BCE (one of my very few antiquities):

My latest is this Aurelian from Cremna/Kremna in Pisidia, with Apollo stringing his bow on the reverse: It's a nice chonky coin at 31mm, and reasonably available. This late, it appears only a few cities in Pisidia and I think one other province (other than Egypt of course) were issuing local coinage. A few examples exist for Tacitus as well, but they are unobtanium as far as I can tell. The most easily found very late provincial coin, I believe, is this issue of Claudius II, also from Pisidia namely Pisidian Antioch: Savoca et al. have sold hundreds of these over the last few years. This is fascinating! I wonder what the exchange rate was?

Thanks!! I like your avatar. Plus it might serve as a bit of consolation for those who felt misled by my clickbait thread title. 😄

Agree with the implication that Egypt stuff is outside the scope of this thread. Not that that will stop our die-hard Roman Egypt fans. 😁 Great topic, great OP coin, and I have a couple things to post. But my fricken’ computer’s on the fritz, aaaargh! Dunno how you guys do this on a phone. 😵‍💫

Your posters are amazing DR/@LONGINUS!! When some of my coins were displayed at the local university, I inserted the actual coins into a poster, with an enlarged photo of the other side. The posters were taped right on the inside of a glass panel so people could get their eye right up to the coin. Magnifiers were provided. It worked very well! Then COVID hit and the display was shut down... 😢

Hooray! Website still sucks though. 😆 Another pet peeve: you still can't have a watchlist on Roma. Still true? So annoying! 🤨😉 Back to photos: Heritage Europe is almost as bad as Frank! Sorry, I guess I must be in a complainy mood tonight, not like me. I'd better go to bed! 😴

Thanks for the compliment, @Curtisimo! Though I don't think I really deserve it, my photos are far from professional. I do try to accurately represent the coin, though... hard when you're taking many hundreds of photos however. I'm actually on @Hesiod's side regarding Frank's photos. I don't think there's any excuse any more for the lo-res stuff... in fact I imagine it's quite difficult to make them that bad. And I have had to send several coins back in the last few years (or have just sold them) because of the poor photos not revealing smoothing and other issues not described. I like Frank a lot (especially his awesome jokes) and he was one of my go-to guys in the 80's and 90's but I rarely bid in his auctions any more, what with the poor photos and the highish start prices. (Of course the latter problem is because I'm a cheapskate... 😊) Some other comments: Both Leu and CNG get the colour of AE wrong very frequently, a colour saturation thing I believe. I find that quite frustrating because it's difficult to compensate in any consistent manner for loss of saturation. I would definitely bump them down a notch or two. Naville's photos aren't sharp enough, but there's also something really nice about their photos of silver... a certain kind of gentleness to the gradients that I like. Not sure that's enough to bump them up a notch. I'd bump Naumann up though, I think their photos are OK and I haven't had any rude surprises. Agree with this. I agree with this too, but would bump them up for that reason - I want accurate photos. On the other hand they go way overboard with the direct/shiny lighting. I don't buy from Berk often enough to judge their photos, but agree 110% with @nikitov about their extraordinarily bad website! I hate using it and that's probably partly why I rarely buy from them. Geez, learn how the back button is supposed to work for pete's sake! 😆

It's great to have you here, @ValiantKnight! Three cheers for late Western Rome and its successors!! 😄 I'm lucky enough to own an ex VK Justinian half follis minted in Rome:

Bahmani sultanate: Muhammad Shah III (1463-1482), AE 2/3 gani dated AH 86x (867-869) I went into Calgary Coin while visiting the city to chat with Robert and check out his stock. He had a bunch of Indian coins on hand very cheap, that he'd acquired at a bargain basement price from Steve Album. I'm a generalist history-based collector and my coverage of India at the time was very poor, so I went to town and bought a bunch! This one cost me about 5 bucks Canadian, so basically free in USD. 😄 The Bahmani sultanate was a breakoff of the Delhi sultanate on the Deccan plateau, and was continually warring with the Hindu Vijayanagara empire. (No doubt some of the modern Hindu-Muslim tension on the subcontinent can be traced to this conflict.) Muhammad Shah III came to the throne at the tender age of 9 years; his famous "renaissance man" first minister Mahmud Gawan (1411 – 1481) shared the regency at the time this coin was minted, and became the sultan's most trusted minister of state. Until, that is, some enemies of Gawan hatched a plot against him, forging documents alleging he was conspiring with the Vijayanagara. Drunk, the sultan had the old man executed, but was devastated later upon discovering the deception. He died the next year, allegedly "of remorse."

I love the difficult topic of Diocletian's reform and have a few relevant coins. First, you're right about the close similarity between the last antoniniani/aureliani and the post-reform radiates (esp. in the east). Here's an early Diocletian antoninianus (I prefer not to change the name with Aurelian's reform), then a late one, and then a post-reform radiate of Constantius I (I don't have a Diocletian, should get one): The first two coins are both from Antioch, but you can see how the portrait style has changed from something quite Probus-like to the stark tetrarchal style. That's in about ten years, the first coin dates to 284 and the second to 293-5. The third coin, the post-reform radiate, obviously continues the tetrarchic style (Heraclea this time) and dates to 295/6. (Dates are -ish. I'm just following RIC here.) As Seth says, it now lacks the XXI in the exergue. The small laureate you show with the Jupiter reverse is actually a pre-reform denarius. I have one of these of Carinus (18mm and 2.09g): Pre-reform there was an even smaller coin normally called a quinarius. Here's my Diocletian dating to 284-5. It's only 1.83g and 16mm: I do have one of the rare small post-reform laureates as well, probably the best candidate for the denarius communis. The type is always VTILITAS PVBLICA I think. Mine is 1.42g and 17mm (issued 294-ish, Ticinum mint): Finally, here are some of my early issue large post-reform laureates, i.e. the follis/nummus that we're all familiar with - these are 1st issues unless otherwise mentioned): OK, I'll stop there so I leave some space for others to post too. ☺️

I think "perfectly imperfect" was indeed up, which @DANTEnailed, and so Dante's resurrection of @Steve's hooves choice is the target. Are these impressive enough? There's at least a lot of them! 😬 (Syracuse: Hieron I (478-467 BC) tetradrachm): And here are some tramplin' hooves from the Paramaras of Malwa or their successors c. 1200 (AR dramma): Next: India

Here's THE Bahri Mamluk, Baybars (1260-1277), a dirham dated 664 or 674 AH: Next: Islamic coin with a different animal or a person depicted

Keeping with the three fish theme, here's a coin of the Aq Qoyunlu, or "White Sheep", a Turkic confederation. They claimed descent from Oghuz Khan and his grandson, Bayandur Khan, thus the Bayandur tamgha on the coinage. This is a coin of Jahāngir (1444-1453) and I think it's quite beautiful in design: Next: Islamic coin

I'd love to know the title of the book - if the French isn't too literary/advanced it might help me brush up before meeting you. 😄 Here's my (maybe) Eleanor: ANGLO-GALLIC, Aquitaine: Eleanor of Aquitaine (1137-1204), AR Denier. Bordeaux Obv: DVCISIT (horizontal S), m/ ++/ Λ in three lines Rev: + AGVITANIE, cross pattée If the legend means Ducissa Itervm (“Duchess again”) this issue would make sense post 1185, when Henry II and Eleanor reclaimed Aquitaine in her name from Philip II of France. It must be admitted, however, that its assignment to Eleanor is not secure. (Duplessy gives it to her father, Guillaume X.) My thanks are due to @Orfew on both of these coins!

I love the portrait on your new Jaime II, @Spaniard! Sadly I am sorely lacking in medieval Spanish coins, especially non-Islamic ones. Here's an obolo of Alfonso X el Sabio, Castile (1252-1284):

Do you have any idea where I might get an example known to have come from such a hoard? PM me if preferred. Thx!

He is really showing off his manhood as well! 😆

Thanks so much for the revised attributions, @TuckHard! For some reason I can't see the image below what you wrote though, just this: