New ruler - old stamp

[Prieure de Sion]

That’s not my coin - this coin is part of the Naville Numismatic Auction on Sunday 13.11.22 at biddr. 

https://www.biddr.com/auctions/navillenumismatics/browse?a=3041&l=3443378 
 

When I looked through the overview of the auction I thought - oh an interesting Gordianus III from Antioch. Then I saw the description and thought - oh the auction house got Philip II wrong. But the legend on the front says it too - it really is a Philip II. 

This must be a fairly early mintage when there was no accurate information on the appearance of Philip in Antioch. So they just took Gordianus on the spot. There were enough stamps of Gordianus in Antioch. An interesting coinage.

How does it look with you?

Do you also have coins with portraits that are more visually reminiscent of the predecessor? 

[kapphnwn]

I touched on this topic a few weeks ago, however I was on vacation and did not have access to my notes nor the coins that at one time were in my collection. However coinage of Gordian III from the mint of Antioch in Pisidia is truely vast. Of the larger sestertius sized coins 34 mm or larger there are some 50 dies noted by Kryzanowska in her work published in Warsaw back in 1976 This a a truly prodigious number of coins possibly over a million. The authors of RPC vol VII.2 note that many of these coins have images on the reverse that reflect sestertii minted by other emperors as early as Trajan.  At some point Gordian III introduces a half unit with a radiate crown usually in the 26-28 mm range and weighing usually a bit more that 12 grms. These are nit as common as the larger sestertius sized coins. 

  At his death in 244 AD a series of coins featuring a radiate crown and Gordian's portrait were struck for Philip  This is an example that used to be in my collection. THIS IS NO LONGER MY COIN

These coins are roughly struck at the same standard as those struck by Gordian III. I believe these coins are actually meant to represent Philip I. It is unlikely that the die cutters would have had a portrait of Philip to work with and so they used the image of the previous emperor as a stop gap. Later there was a reduction in both weight and diameter,

 

 

 Again this coin was once in my collection THIS IS NO LONGER MY COIN These coins are now 22-24 mm and weighing about 8.5 grms.  At this point we can see that the mint has adopted a more veristic image of Philip. Furthermore the image of the three military standards becomes more or less the standard reverse from this mint. I believe this is a more plausible explanation for the coinage of Philip from this mint. Otherwise we have to assume that the Mint of Antioch in Pisidia minted two sets of dupondii at different weight standards the lesser coin be that of the emperor and though they had an image of Philip I did not get one for Philip II.  As Philip II did not become an Augustus until 247 AD and the larger module coin does clearly give him that title, it does stretch credulity 

Edited November 12, 2022 by kapphnwn

[Ocatarinetabellatchitchix]

3 hours ago, Prieure de Sion said:

Do you also have coins with portraits that are more visually reminiscent of the predecessor? 

I think Florianus looks a tiny bit like Tacitus here, doesn’t he ?

 

And here are two Victorinus with the portrait of Marius:

 

[ambr0zie]

Early Trajan coinage resembles Nerva, more or less. In the first 2-3 years the portraits are clearly different from the well known Trajan portraits.