Lhevae

Great post and coins, with a cool provenance (😇).

I've seen some kind of bronze disease on 20% billon that looks almost as silver, but never on higher % silver coins.

Vietnam, Thiên Phù Nguyên Báo (An Phap coinage, 16-17th c., Tonkin area?)

AE, 20mm, 1.10g

Next : a coin not issued by a government, state... an "unofficial" coin (or token that was meant to circulate)

 天啓通寶 (Tian Qi tong bao), 1621-1627,  rev. : 工 (Gong), Board of works

Next : a non-chinese and non-japanese cash coin

Alexander wearing Ammon's horn.

Lysimachos, AR Tetradrachm, Lampsakos mint, Thompson 42.

Next : a posthumous portrait, but not of Alexander

Low countries, Cu rechenpfennig, Dordrecht, 1603. Siege of Oostende / Distrust regarding the peace promised by the archdukes.

ALLVD IN LINGUA ALIVD IN PECTORE (sic) / Fox on the ground, asking a rooster standing on a tree branch to join him

IN ADVERSVS VIRTVS CIↃ IↃ CIII / Aerial view of the besieged city of Oostende

Dugniolle 3559; van Loon II, 10

Next : a coin depicting a city (or at least several buildings/parts of a city)

Is there a possibility this statue was stolen by activisits because of its link with Mussolini rather than its scrap value?

In both cases, it's a shame anyway. 

And to fit the topic, one of the coins I own that is NOT in Göbl's book.

IMP GALLIENVS AVG ; radiate and cuirassed bust left, viewed from front, holding spear and shield
GENIVS AVG | VI-/ ; Genius standing left, holding patera and cornucopiae; standard on right

Göbl 398t (0 ex.)

The closest thing to the MIR 36 online is the collection of Marcy K, that is online but of course that's only sufficient if you look for a reference and, by chance, it's in this collection. https://bnumis.com/gallienus.net/index.html

The physical copy of the books is still published and available here : https://verlag.oeaw.ac.at/produkt/die-muenzpraegung-der-kaiser-valerianus-i-gallienus-saloninus-253-268-regalianus-260-und-macrianus-quietus-260-262/600196?product_form=3248

Used copies are selling here and there, but often at a higher price than that, or not much lower.

I highly recommend it if you're an active collector of Gallienus.

14 hours ago, Harry G said:

I was actually the first bid on that SPQR Salonina (although my bid of 10EUR was more to get the email notification of the lot coming up rather than an attempt to win it!). It's a very nice coin, and doubtless one of the finest of the type.

I've actually seen 3 other SPQR Saloninas come up for sale in the last 6 months or so, all sold in group lots by Roma. I bid on all of them, but didn't win any. As my budget as increased since they cam up for sale, I seriously regret not bidding more on them.

https://www.romanumismatics.com/258-lot-1417-lot-of-20-roman-imperial-bi-coins?arr=0&auction_id=158&box_filter=0&cat_id=&department_id=&exclude_keyword=&export_issue=0&gridtype=listview&high_estimate=0&image_filter=0&keyword=&list_type=list_view&lots_per_page=100&low_estimate=0&month=&page_no=0&paper_filter=0&search_type=&sort_by=lot_number&view=lot_detail&year=

Bottom right, FORTVNA AVG. Sold for £380. Very nice obverse, reverse has some deposits, and SPQR barely visible

https://www.romanumismatics.com/259-lot-2021-lot-of-20-roman-imperial-bi-coins?arr=0&auction_id=159&box_filter=0&cat_id=&department_id=&exclude_keyword=&export_issue=0&gridtype=listview&high_estimate=0&image_filter=0&keyword=&list_type=list_view&lots_per_page=100&low_estimate=0&month=&page_no=0&paper_filter=0&search_type=&sort_by=lot_number&view=lot_detail&year=

Another FORTVNA AVG example that only reached £240

https://www.romanumismatics.com/260-lot-1789-lot-of-20-late-roman-a-coins?arr=0&auction_id=160&box_filter=0&cat_id=&department_id=&exclude_keyword=&export_issue=0&gridtype=listview&high_estimate=0&image_filter=0&keyword=&list_type=list_view&lots_per_page=100&low_estimate=0&month=&page_no=0&paper_filter=0&search_type=&sort_by=lot_number&view=lot_detail&year=

This is the one I regret not bidding on most, as it went for "very cheap" at £110 (ok, still expensive for a Salonina). I would have bid a lot more on this, but I had just spent around £500 on a different auction for coins to sell on eBay, so I couldn't justify it then. It's a SALVS AVG example, and obviously from a different hoard than the other two. On the bright side, one of the coins I bought instead was my Alexius and John Asen trachy in a group lot for £1 a coin, that has since been sent to auction (ironically Roma).

 

Anyway, to fit with the theme of this thread, here are a couple of my silvered Gallienus antoninianii!

Pictures formatted weirdly to avoid my photo quality looking terrible.

VICT GAL AVG - an extremely rare type, possibly with the bust wearing a lion skin. This coin is infinitely nicer in hand than my photo suggests (better ones coming soon), with the deposits being much less pronounced, the coin being less shiny, and the surface not as rough as it looks.

Gallienus - PROVIDENTIA AVGG

Gallienus - VIRTVS AVG / SPQR. Not silvered, but I feel it fits well in this thread!

Gallienus - TIA AVG TIA AVG (Error). Shown multiple times before, but it's one of my cooler coins, so you may be seeing it often 😄

Gallienus - ABVNDANTIA AVG

Wow, the VIC GAL AVG is fantastic! Great coin! If one day you're parting with it (which I doubt, but you never know), I'm definitely interested. This is such a rare and interesting piece. Congrats.

Coins of Gallienus and Salonina from Smyrna (SPQR mintmark) are all rare, known to a few specimens only, many types and variants unlisted in the main references, and many collectors are after them, making the prices high. 

Some mostly, if not fully, silvered coins from the sole reign of Gallienus.

My Magnentius, struck in Trier (TRS almost out of flan), with a GLORIA ROMANORVM reverse. I'm a fan of the detailed reverse, the massive portrait and the patina.

9 hours ago, Alegandron said:

China

Wu Zhu coin

clay mold

unearthed in SanMenXia City in HeNan Province

full obverse impression partial second impression

probly H-8.6

110-90 BCE

Very nice, these moulds are fun and great in a collection! Here's the counterpart to yours, part of a clay 'mother mould' used to print the moulds. 

11 hours ago, Spaniard said:

This is not my area of collecting 'at the moment '......

But I did pick up my first Chinese cash coin...

CHINA. Xin Dynasty.
Emperor Wang Mang AD 9-23.
AE Cash, 23mm, 2.8g.
Fifth reform, with inner rim; struck AD 14-23.
Obv.:(wealth coin).
Rev.: blank, as made.
Reference: Hartill #9.32.
Ex-Alex Fishman

Just wondering what would this type of script be described as?

Nice one! It's in seal script, and more precisely great seal script if I'm not mistaken. See the huobu spade I shared above, the huo character (on the right) is pretty much in the same style, it just have more room to expand on the spade.

@Severus Alexanderand @milesofwho, amazing coins you shared!

Here's mine, a rarer variant with a cuirassed bust and no mintmark. 

Göbl 573w (17 ex.) ; Cunetio 1168 (10 ex.) 

Fantastic series, some of them are really hard to find! I especially like the bold portrait of Antoninus Pius.

Some nice errors on this thread. Here's a flip-over of a Tetricus I, with HILARITAS AVGG on the reverse (and on the obverse!).

I brought back this one from a coin show just today! I'm quite happy as this is a lovely type, and that makes a new dynasty to my collection (and it was cheap enough). The inscription is based on the wu zhu that were still circulating back then but the characters are quite elegant and the overall workmanship is fine.

NORTHERN QI, Anonymous, Chang Ping Wu Zhu / 常平五銖 (553-577), 1 wen.

The stag has large and typical antlers, you cannote hesitate when you see one. Coins below are not mine.

(Picture : Leu)

(Picture : Jacquier)

Also, the tenth officina (X mintmark) produced only stags. And stags were produced only by the tenth officina. So even if the antlers are not very clear, if you see a X, it's a stag. And if you don't, well, it's something else!

What makes a coin beautiful to you? I am pretty confident to say that most of us will answer, "design", among other factors. And that is a fact, the iconography of a coin plays a major role in its attractiveness when it comes to western coins. We will enjoy a coin for its original design or its refined and particularly detailed engraving. When confronted to chinese coins, we are often disoriented by what we think to be a total lack of design and originality. Indeed, our conception of numismatic art is almost exclusively based on the iconography (from the latin iconographia, ~"drawing art", coming itself from the greek Εἰϰονογραφία). Ancient coins might be seen as little pieces of ancient art, and some if not a large part of engravers were definitely trying to reach something more than just a formal design with their work. But I'm preaching to the choir here. On the other hand, calligraphy is not really the strong point of western coinage, inscriptions having a purely functional role.

One of the main features of ancient chinese coins is the absence of iconography. Since the birth of chinese coinage to the early 20th century only, chinese coins only had characters for themselves. Does that mean that people in China weren't seeking art in their coin production or that they couldn't come with anything artistic? I will not dwell on the particularity of the production (i.e. by casting coins in mass) that without a doubt contributed to the this absence of designs, but chinese coins are definitely more than just characters. There has been numismatists in China for a long time, and their interests were very different from the western collectors. This post will focus on the beautiful writing (literally) : calligraphy. I will speak about the main and more noticeable calligraphy styles used on coins.

Although the interest in calligraphy in China traces back to the early antiquity, its importance on coinage really gained momentum during the reign of (the usurper) Wang Mang (9 - 23 AD). Before that, little to no attention was given to the calligraphy of spades and knives (most of them). On the same page, the calligraphy on Wu Zhu and Ban Liang was standardised the result of a simplification of the traditional seal script (small seal script).

Wang Mang, in his first monetary reforms, kept using the small seal script in use on the during the Han Dynasty, although the care brought to it was definitely more noticeable. However the former Han official was a nostalgic for the golden confucean era and quickly created a complex monetary system, reintroducing spades, knives and other fancy coin shapes that were discontinued for centuries. With this new coinage, he also gave the Great Seal script (大篆, Dàzhuàn) an elegant and refined revival, sometimes called "suspended needles seal script". This name is pretty self speaking (see fig. 2 below). However, Wang Mang reign was short-lived and his reform of coinage was quickly abandoned.

1. Xin dynasty, Wang Mang (9-23 AD), 大泉五十 / Da Quan Wu Shi (27mm, 4.30g), large coin worth 50, small seal script.

2. Xin dynasty, Wang Mang (9-23 AD), Huo Bu, spade of 25 (57x22mm, 17.20g), great seal script.

The centuries following Wang Mang's death saw a lot of political changes and marked an era of division and chaos for chinese coinage. Coinage was overall very poor in terms of workmanship and diversity. Most of the coins in circulation at a given moment were Wu Zhu : old coins, chiselled ones, private cast, reduced coins... Some kingdoms and dynasties tried to reintroduce the great seal script alongside coins of higher quality, but this was eventually a roller-coaster and all these initiatives didn't last long. The poor Wu Zhu were always coming back. I will share one of the finest uses of the great seal scripts of this period, for the sake of it, but it's not from my collection (unfortunately).

3. Northern Zhou, anonymous (557-581 AD), Yong Tong Wan Guo / 永通萬國 (580-581 AD), "jade sticks" seal script.  Picture : SARC.

With the durable unification of China under the rule of the Tang dynasty, from the 7th century to the 10th century, the Lishu script became the new dominant script on coins. This was originally the one used by merchants and civil servants on a daily basis. This is a more angular script, easier to write, with regular and almost straight strokes. This straightforward and clear script was perfect for one of the most important and durable reforms of coinage China had ever seen : the introduction of a new coin, the Kai Yuan Tong Bao (but I won't discuss the Tang coinage here in detail). 

4. Tang dynasty, Su Zong (756-762 AD), 乾元重寶 /Qian Yuan zhong bao, 10 wen (30mm ; 7.25g)

However, the turning point of calligraphy on chinese coins really was the Northern Song dynasty (960 - 1127 AD). You have to see this period as the equivalent to the european Renaissance. Culture was florishing, the interest in art and history was growing, and calligraphy was one of the more popular arts alongside poetry and painting. Being a talented calligrapher could get you as much recognition a great sculptor could have in ancient Greece. The first important calligraphy style used was the kaishu, or regular script. Albeit similar to the lishu, from which he was inspired, the regular script is based on what a painting brush would create : it's less angular, and a single stroke should not be even in terms of thickness (fig. 5).

But the Song wouldn't stop there. One style wasn't enough. They soon introduced a great variety of calligraphy style in their coins, often issuing a single type in two or three different styles, declining the era names in various aesthetics. The running script was born during the Han dynasty but was only used on coins during the Song (fig. 6). It is a more natural, quick way of writing characters following the kaishu script, reducing the straight lines and allowing different strokes to merge. Another style in use, and this is probably my favourite, was the grass style. It was also a centuries-old style mastered by the Song. It goes one step further than the running script : straight lines are almost non-existent, components of the characters are ommitted, reducing the character to a fluid movement, in an almost abstract way (fig. 7). Notice how each character change from one style to another.

5. Northern Song, Tai Zong (976-997), 至道元寶 / Zhi Dao yuan bao (995-997), 1 wen, regular script.

6. Northern Song, Tai Zong (976-997), 至道元寶 / Zhi Dao yuan bao (995-997), 1 wen, running script.

7. Northern Song, Tai Zong (976-997), 至道元寶 / Zhi Dao yuan bao (995-997), 1 wen, grass script.

The Song also did not fail to use the classic seal script (fig. 8.) on a fair amount of types. The very special nine fold seal script was also used on some coins of Ren Zong (fig. 9). This script was the one actually used on official seals and for daoist fulu talisman. The nine fold is a very intricate, ornate and complicated version of the traditional seal script. You can see how every character has multiple folds and layers, compared to the usual seal script. There is only one type of coin with this script, only known to a handful of examples, and it was probably not meant for circulation.

However, the pinnacle of calligraphic artistry was probably reached during the reign of Hui Zong (1101-1125). Hui Zong himself was a famous painter, poet and calligrapher. The large coins bearing the era names Chong Ning exist in a peculiar script called slender gold script (fig. 10). This script, whose base is the kaishu script, is said to be from the hand of the emperor Hui Zong himself. The fact that these coins initially valued at 10 cash are large (~34mm) allow a great display of this particularly fine and elegant calligraphy style. I won't share my own specimen here because it's in particularly bad shape and I've yet to upgrade it, but these coins are hopefully very common and affordable. This was not the first time an emperor was involved in the calligraphy process of a coin type, and history records attribute a few other coin types to the hand of a given emperor.

8. Northern Song, Ren Zong (1022-1063), Ming Dao yuan bao / 明道元寶 (1032-1033), seal script.

9. Northern Song, Ren Zong (1022-1063), Huang Song tong bao / 皇宋通寶 (1039-1054), nine folded seal script, later cast charm (weight: 7 grams).

10. Northern Song, Hui Zong (1101-1125), Chong Ning tong bao (1102-1106), 10 wen, slender gold script. Picture : Ira and Larry Goldberg.

I will end here this post, it's already long enough. I only wanted it to be a short introduction for those of you who are not familiar with chinese calligraphy on coins. However, other variants of the above scripts as well as other scripts do exist on coins (special mention to the very sepcial 'phags-pa script and to the later manchu on Qing coins), as well as a single coin can actually bear characters of different scripts. Whatever, I hope you enjoyed the post and feel free to share your old chinese coins or coins with a fine calligraphy (islamic coins, I'm looking at you!).

Just now, Heliodromus said:

Very interesting - I wasn't aware of that.

You wouldn't happen to know if these mint artifacts are on display anywhere, online or real world ?

 

I don't know if and where they are displayed unfortunately. This article available for free online speak about the discoveries, including the monetary ones, and includes very few pictures : https://journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/index.php/tz/article/download/54963/59533/188277 (that link will download the article in PDF format). The article is in german.

This article of Karl-Josef Gilles supposedly discuss more in detail monetary findings, I guess with pictures, but I don't have access to it. http://opac.regesta-imperii.de/lang_de/anzeige.php?aufsatz=Die+Münzstätte+der+Gallischen+Kaiser+in+Trier&pk=2062121

I'd rather see two horses prancing on the reverse, like on some macedonian coins with a janiform head on the obverse. The size and weight lead towards an eastern imitation like this probably https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=3052096 I don't have any more additional information to bring about these imitations though.

Just now, Heliodromus said:

One interesting thing about this type is that the officina A coins show genius with some generic turrreted headgear, but officina B often has a city gate instead such as this one of mine:

And better yet, sometimes a double-entrance city gate which seems like it may be the porta nigra.

Above coin not mine, sadly.

 

 

It is worth noting that there was actually a mint next to the Porta Nigra. In 2005, excavations led during the expansion of the Simeonstift museum (just next to the Porta Nigra) unearthed hundreds of coins but also semi-finished coins, aurei offstrikes, metal bars and ingots... from the end of the reign of Tetricus. We know that the Trier mint was closed afterwards, but maybe the mint (or one of the officinas) was again located next to the Porta Nigra when it was re-opened.