Marcus

Thank you for the comparison to your coin, the dies seem indeed quite similar. And good to know that I might have been seeing ghosts here... You are right that RIC 611 is not a common denarius in general - only when looking at Commodus Caesar in isolation (which is one of my focus areas) it's one of the more often occurring ones.

This unusual coin was acquired by me recently (picture is the seller’s): Obv: COMMODVS CAES AVG FIL GERM SARM draped bust r. Rev: HILARITAS Hilaritas std. l. 20 mm, 3.34 g Instead of the very common RIC 611 it has COMMODVS instead of COMMODO, which is unknown to me for any denarius of the GERM SARM issue. In the previous (first) issue (GERM only) there are some scarcer denarii with COMMODVS CAES AVG FIL GERM instead of COMMODO (BMCRE 633 note, 634 (= RIC 598 corr) and 639 note). (Aurei only have COMMODO for both issues. Sestertii and asses have COMMODVS for the first and COMMODO for the second issue). Is this a very good contemporary imitation? It seems quite genuine style-wise, but I find it hard to believe that this obverse die has gone unnoticed up to now. Or have there been other examples of this variant that I have missed to find?