Have You Ever Accidently Purchased Two Of The Same Coin?

[Hrefn]

@Rand the coin lacking an officina was purchased from Superior Galleries sale May 1990 #7376.   The duplicate Anastasius also has the angel holding chi-rho standard, but does have an officina mark, B.   So they are not exactly duplicates, I suppose.   I have never had the ambition to collect solidi by officina, nor the resources!  The last person I know who did that was Rodolpho Ratto, and he sold his collection in 1930.  I will have to check his sale catalog to see if he had an officina-less Anastasius.  I have the catalog here, and (mirabile dictu) I think I even know where it is.  

I do not have Hahn’s book.  Do you recommend it?

[Rand]

Two volumes of Hahn's book have been published in English. I do recommend them, even though they may not add much to your extensive knowledge of the gold coins of the period. These are probably the best books on the early Byzantine coins.

Hahn W, Metlich MA. Money of the Incipient Byzantine Empire (Anastastius I - Justinian I, 491-565). Vol 1. 2nd edition, revised, was published in 2013

Hahn W, Metlich MA. Money of the Incipient Byzantine Empire (Justin II - Revolt of the Heraclii 565-610). Vol 2., 2009.

The 1975 German-language version of the book has three volumes, still popular and expensive. I remember my Euro 400 bid was outbid before the English version was published (which is better for me as I am not interested in later coins).

Below is your coin from the book and my copy of the two volumes. 

 

Edited November 19, 2023 by Rand

[Rand]

@Hrefn Thank you for checking Ratto's calatlogue. I do not recall it having one missing officina, but I may be wrong. I tried to reconstruct Anastasius part of his collection from modern sales and could not. I probably have one of his coins, but old images from casts with crops make it hard to be certain.

For the type discussed I have officinae A, B, E, S (reversed), Z, and Θ. Will need to return to it to complete. The one with missing officina is the most difficult (along with E, and Z).

Going back to the topic of the post, I have a die-match triplicate for this series with a forth coin linked by reverse. Not exactly bought by mistake - a small hoard (likely) was sold and I bought some of the coins.

 

[maridvnvm]

I have bought multiple examples of the same type many times but more often than not it is entriely deliberate rather than accidental.

The Moneta seated type of the eastern COS II issue of Septimius Severus is listed in RIC with reverse legend MONETA II AVG but is noted as doubtful.

 

 

I found the following coin which could be mis-read as MONETA II AVG but is two spacing dots which are elongated and could be interpreted as Is.

Some time later I found the following example of the same reverse die but with a different obverse die.

These sit alongside the same reverse die of Julia Domna.

Knowing that the type is quite scarce I then obtained other variations:-

I found a MONET AVG variation. This one has an obverse legend ending COS I-I and looks as though the P in SEP of the obverse legend has been corrected from an L.

I then found the following coin but the reverse legend is from an off-centre strike leading to an ambiguous reading.....

unless you find a double die match....

In summary. Buying multiple examples of the "same coin" can be deliberate but sometimes takes a lot of patience.

[Sulla80]

On 11/17/2023 at 5:20 PM, Furryfrog02 said:

As most of you know, I have a thing for Victory and I am always down to get a different Victory reverse from every emperor possible. Well I got excited last week when I saw a Florian up for auction that had a Victory on the reverse. For some reason, I thought my Florian was a Salus reverse. I checked my records of which I am normally very good at maintaining. No picture of a Florian to be found. Was it all just a fever dream? Well no picture and not in my database means I must not have one. Time to bid, bid hard, and win win win!

I was super excited when the auction closed and I was Victorious (pun intended)! While waiting for my new prize to arrive I was doing a bit of house cleaning. I know I had a Florian. I had to find it and get it into my database. A few flips of the coin binder later and there he was, gazing back at me in all his fat-faced glory. I flipped it over fully expecting to to see Salus and her serpentine sidekick staring back at me. What did I see instead? Why, it was the vivacious vixen Victory.....I had somehow managed to completely screw up and get two of the same coin.  Down to the officina. Oof.  I have no idea how this coin slipped through and wasn't catalogued. 

I won Florian #2 with a bid of almost $70 after shipping and taxes. This is one of the most expensive coins I've ever purchased. I was super excited at first but now I feel like an idiot. 

Has anyone made a mistake like mine? Please tell your stories and make me feel better!

Well, @Furryfrog02, I will also confess that I have more than once bought a coin that I thought I didn't have, only to find that "hey, I have that coin"...oh well - at least version two (bottom) was a little nicer than version one (top), and they are different dies, so they aren't really the same coin....ah well, two victories (or two torphies in my case) doesn't sound all that bad either!

Edited November 27, 2023 by Sulla80

[Furryfrog02]

That's a good way to look at it @Sulla80 Different dies mean different coins. Right? Think my wife will buy that? 😉

[DonnaML]

4 hours ago, Furryfrog02 said:

That's a good way to look at it @Sulla80 Different dies mean different coins. Right? Think my wife will buy that? 😉

That loophole would permit you to buy hundreds of "different" specimens for many different types, especially for Roman Republican coins with all the different control numbers and symbols. Not to mention all the different officinae for later Roman coins. "Collect 'em all" -- just like I used to take my son to McDonalds all the time when he was 4 or 5 to collect Happy Meal toys. After a few years of that, he became a lifelong vegetarian.

[akeady]

I've often inadvertently bought a second or third example of something by accident.   This was the main reason I started cataloguing my collection a bit better.

I think my best multiple buying achievement was 3 years ago, when on 17th September, 27th September and 7th October 2020 I managed to buy 3 examples of Cr. 244/1 in different auctions.   I looked at what I had and had thrown in bids well in advance on three auctions because I didn't already have an example.   I realised later on that I was bidding on the same coin and as always in such cases won all three.

From H.D. Rauch, 17th September

From Naville, 27th September

From NAC, 7th October

The NAC coin is by far the nicest and maybe someday I'll sell the others.

Moneyer:	C. Aburius Geminus
Coin:	Silver Denarius GEM - Helmeted head of Roma right C. ABVRI - Mars in quadriga right, holding spear, shield, trophy and reins
Exergue:	ROMA
Mint:	Rome (ca. 134 BC)
Wt./Size/Axis:	3.89g / 19mm / 1h
References:	RSC 1 (Aburia) Sydenham 490 Crawford 244/1 RBW 1006
Provenances:	Ex. Kuenker Sale 193, lot 364, 26-Sep-2011
Acquisition:	Numismatica Ars Classica Online auction Auction 120 #514 7-Oct-2020

Yours in duplication,
Aidan.

[JeandAcre]

As a medievals guy (from here, 'medievalist' sounds hopelessly pretensious), I've gradually learned to appreciate ostensible duplicates, for the often richly synergetic way that they complement eachother.  For instance, in this case.

 

As several of the worthy folk have been saying here, ancients readily allow for a similar dynamic.  In both cases, to wallow in the obvious (never stopped me before), they're hand struck, more often than not from different dies, with a vast range of patina.  The range of variation can be (to paraphrase Cicero) both fun and enlightening.

(...Well, in the case of medievals, unless you're looking at recent detector finds of silver, which tend to involve more cleaning than one could wish.  --Granted, otherwise, detector finds qualify as their own kind of provenance.  For the most part, no one had seen them after they stopped circulating.  Kind of cool all by itself, cleaning or not.) 

To play Aesop, the moral is that there's nothing wrong with duplicates.  ...After this, I'll shut up.  But, for another instance, the earlier phases of the French feudal series are full of immobilizations of Carolingian types, which can only be (approximately) dated by stylistic variations, in convergence with hoard evidence.  With ancient Roman, maybe the chronological dimension doesn't loom so large, but the esthetic one is no less resonant.

 

 

[Valentinian]

2 hours ago, JeandAcre said:

with a vast range of patina.

These could be considered duplicates, but were not accidental. I love the denomination and the patinas are enough different to consider the coins different and the more recent ones are better overall.

Four coins of the Byzantine emperor Tiberius II, 578-582. Sear 432. 30-nummia minted at Constantinople. The type is large at about 33 mm which makes it easy to see and appreciate.



33 mm. 11.73 grams. Coppery. Bought in 1977.



Green patina with light cover. 34-32 mm. 12.46 grams. Bought in 2020.




33-32 mm. 11.44 grams. Good facial details. Bought in 2022.

33.7 mm. 12.76 grams. Wonderful orange cover. Bought in 2023.

Maybe I have enough examples of that type. But, if one with good details and a much-different surface came along at a good price, I'd consider it!

[JeandAcre]

Précisément!  You nailed it, mon ami, with a mallet.  Right, they're all from the same mint.  Who cares?  Beyond not being able to doubt that you have every intention of hanging on to all of them, I'm really needing your intentionality (/to improvise, esthetic strategy?) in acquiring them in the first place.

Edited November 28, 2023 by JeandAcre

[Valentinian]

22 hours ago, JeandAcre said:

I'm really needing your intentionality

Long ago when I was a beginner, long before the internet could tell us how common or uncommon coin types were, I got interested in Byzantine copper coins and had the impression XXX pieces were unusual and special. I am still stuck with that first impression. The type has become much more common and recent examples are selling for about what I paid for my first one in 1977.  The recent examples seem to me to be a great bargain. They seem to me to be worth more than they cost. 

[Furryfrog02]

5 hours ago, Valentinian said:

Long ago when I was a beginner, long before the internet could tell us how common or uncommon coin types were, I got interested in Byzantine copper coins and had the impression XXX pieces were unusual and special. I am still stuck with that first impression. The type has become much more common and recent examples are selling for about what I paid for my first one in 1977.  The recent examples seem to me to be a great bargain. They seem to me to be worth more than they cost. 

As someone who has only been collecting a few years, I still see the XXX pieces to be fairly uncommon. I think I've only seen one for sale by you and less than a handful of others.