JAZ Numismatics

The style of that coin is truly amazing. Looks like Heracles went to see Hans and Franz...

The history of Gerrha and northeastern Arabia is poorly known. Even the location of the city is a mystery, but it is thought to have been located near the modern village of Thaj in Saudi Arabia.

Like their neighbors, the Nabataeans, the Gerrhaeans had grown wealthy as middlemen in the Arabian incense trade, supplying Babylonian and Mesopotamian markets with frankincense and myrrh obtained in Saba. The earliest issues of Gerrha consisted of tetradrachms, drachms, and obols imitating the types of Alexander III, although Zeus has been transmogrified into the sun-god Shams, with the letter Shem in the left field. (Image courtesy of CNG, not my coin)...

A billon coinage was also issued in the city of Mleiha (close to modern-day Dubai) in three denominations. The designs are far more stylized than the Gerrhaean coins, almost reminiscent of Celtic coinage. This is the only coin in my collection from the Eastern Arabian cultures - they are generally quite rare, although the Mleihan coins are perhaps only scarce. However, the seated right varieties are rare...

ARABIA, Eastern. Mleiha. Uncertain. 1st century BC – 2nd century AD. BI Tetradrachm (25mm, 13.7 g). Imitating Alexander III of Macedon. In the name of ’Abi’el. Stylized head of Herakles right, wearing lion skin / Figure enthroned right, holding scepter in left hand, right hand extended, upon which a small “horse” stands left; palm tree to right, trident-like symbol to inner right, ’b’l (in crude form of Aramaic) to left. MacDonald, Abiel, Group D.2.2; Huth –; Potts Class XLV; HGC 10, 689 var. (rev. type left).

My conjecture is that the Mleihan issues were intended for local use only, being debased. The silver of Gerrha was coined on the Attic standard. I have no proof of this, however. I would like to see the disposition of the Bahrain Hoard of 1969/70, but I can't seem to find it anywhere. It would perhaps offer some clues. Thank you for reading, and feel free to post any coins of ancient Arabia.

Lol, those are great!

Very instructive as usual. It is curious that so few of the early issues exist given the number of dies and months of production. How long did it take you to hunt down the two seated varieties? It's interesting to note that the CONCORDIA varieties for Faustina II are quite common by comparison. It's also interesting to note that CONCORDIA is the first issue for Faustina I, and that there is a CONCORDIAE memorial issue, Antoninus handing her a scroll of her accomplishments as she takes her leave to reside with the gods (not my coin)...

Sassanian drachm. You can differentiate the rulers by the headdress they wear, but your obverse is obliterated. Some expert in Sassanian may be able to narrow it down.

Wow, great menagerie! Scary creatures, hippos...

38 minutes ago, ela126 said:

Just bought a coin from Marc B on his website last night (frankly with money i didn't really have, oh the wife will be yelling about the CC)

I learned a long time ago to NEVER include the price of the coin in the mailing, just in case it falls into the wrong hands. 😇

I can only speak for myself, but I don't expect any expressions of gratitude as a dealer. In fact, I'm the one that feels grateful for my customers, and I often write, "Thank you for your business" on the packing slips, and sometimes I send a gift to customers who make frequent purchases. It's easy to sell coins when everything goes well, but a dealer's integrity is tested when a customer wants to return a coin. Recently one of my customers wanted to return a coin that was a forgery - it slipped under my radar because it was part of a large consignment and didn't get properly vetted. The customer sent the coin to Harlan Berk and he sent me a link describing that particular fake in detail. So I told him I was of course happy to refund his payment, and did so immediately. He was very grateful and relieved - he had assumed that he was going to have to fight for a refund.

Recently I bought a collection that contained a few Toronto Group forgeries and one of our forum members drew my attention to them. They were promptly withdrawn from my inventory. That's one of the virtues of a group like ours - we can keep an eye out for each other and prevent mistakes. That's what I'm grateful for - the community. There's nothing more destructive to numismatics and dismaying to collectors than forgeries.

Here's a sestertius of Commodus, Salus standing. For reasons unknown to me, this coin is quite rare. The Salus seated type is common, but I've only found two other examples of this type online. RIC III 356...

One of my favorite small Greek bronzes...

Quite right my friends. I should not have interjected any modern politics into the discussion as per the forum rules. My apologies!

Common sestertius of Gordian III, Sol, but very nice grade...

Superb!

@Ryro I love your collecting style and your informative and entertaining threads. Keep it coming!

That's a real beauty - one of my favorite HTT's.

Beautiful! Can we see the reverses?

25 minutes ago, kirispupis said:

I apologize for taking this off topic a bit, but anti-semitism is everywhere. Your original story occurred in Spokane, only a four hour drive from my house. Recently, we had to pull our son out of his university in Boston for a few days so he could decompress due to the amount of anti-semitism on campus. Our synagogue has also been vandalized several times. These are scary times.

The irony is that historically, the Jewish community largely embraced the Trojan horse of diversity, which welcomed Islam and Leftist ideologies into the US with open arms. It was all based on acceptance and compassion, traits that educated people generally abound in. But it was misplaced, and now we are suffering the consequences. I'm guilty of this mistake myself, and I've completely rethought my position. Intolerance can be a virtue.

So the real question is: how much time is enough to erase the distaste of owning objects associated with evil men? Because if you collect Roman, you've got a cabinet full of coins issued by murderous, torturing, genocidal, megalomaniacal, perverse, misogynistic pedophiles. 

By the time of Severus Alexander, the denarii had a significant amount of copper in the alloy, but nowhere near enough to be considered billon, The unintended effect of this debasement was a strong coining alloy that resisted circulation wear. Hence you find many silver coins of this period in higher grades than earlier coins where the fineness was higher, say the denarii of the Flavian Dynasty. (It's exactly the reason US silver coins were produced .900 fine - that 10% copper makes them much tougher.)

A scarce sestertius of Septimius Severus, Roma seated...

Here's Apollo seated on an omphalos, bronze of Antiochus I. An omphalos was a rounded stone representing the navel of the earth in Ancient Greek mythology. It does not look terribly comfortable...

Here's one I currently have in my store...

However, I find the whole "persecution issue" interpretation dubious. It sounds like something a dealer made up to sell the coin to collectors of Christian themes. I've never found anything in the numismatic literature that even discusses a possible link between this particular coin type and the persecution of Christians. Christians were indeed being persecuted at the time, but there was a long-standing tradition of civic coinage that featured Roman deities alone, without reference to a ruler. In fact, it's an entire collecting specialty. More likely the coin was produced for a feast of Apollo in conjunction with the Olympic Games of AD 312 - a limited-run festival issue. We need to have a better discussion about these types, and I would suggest this thread at Cointalk as a start. David@PCC took a close look at these coins and offered a very intriguing analysis.

4 hours ago, seth77 said:

I wondered that too but with just one issue and that rather short for a reign of 20+ years I wonder what kind of religious festival would only happen once every 20+ years? Perhaps the coinage marks a building phase in the town?

There are types that commemorate ongoing religious festivals, but were only struck for a year or two. For instance, the Nabataeans celebrated the Festival of Dushares (their chief deity) every year on December 25, but only one commemorative type is known...

The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man, by Frankfort, Wilson, Jacobsen and Irwin. University of Chicago Press, 1946. A tour de force of comparative religion, contrasting the cosmologies and philosophies of the Egyptians, Mesopotamians, and Hebrews. Highly recommended!

I wonder if the coin was issued to commemorate a religious festival.