Coin Talk

Regrettably, I haven’t been around on CT as much lately nor have I had as much time to spend on my coin hobby in general as I would like. For one, I generally like to complete my study of a coin before I post to the forum. However, considering I am running out of year I figured I’d share a coin that I bought recently hoping to dive deeper into the question of the chronology…

Well, it’s becoming plain that it will be quite some time before I will be able to acquire the necessary references, and more importantly, find the time to read them. In the meantime I figured you all might enjoy seeing my newest acquisition along with the handful of facts that I do know about it.


Greek Colonies in Illyria
Dyrrachion AR Stater, struck ca. 450-350 BC
Dia.: 21.5 mm
Wt.: 9.78 g
Obv.: Cow suckling calf
Rev.: ΔΥΡ around star pattern within linear square; club in field
Ref.: BMC 22, SNG Copenhagen 421
Ex Numismatica Ars Classica sale 641...

Have you ever looked at a coin and asked yourself who has held this? Have you ever asked yourself if maybe one of your ancestors held this coin? Well I decided to dive into my past a little and collect some coins from the era of one of my more famous predecessors, John Wallace.

Now you've probably never heard of John Wallace. But I'm sure you've heard of his much more famous older brother, Sir William Wallace. Not much is known about these two characters of history beyond a few battles and their deaths. But I am sure that for every step that William took, his brother John was close beside him.

The Wallace's foray through history begins with the Battle of Stirling Bridge. The bridge itself was a narrow, wooden thing only wide enough to fit two horsemen abreast. The English numbered around 9,000 men under the command of John de Warenne, 6th Earl of Surrey and Sir Hugh de Cressingham who was the Kings treasurer in Scotland at the time. The Scots numbered...

The last time I did this, it was fun, so I thought it would be fun to do it again. I used a random number generator to pick a coin for me to post today. It chose:


Diadumenian, Caesar AD 217-218.
Roman provincial Æ 16.5 mm, 4.63 g, 11:00.
Syria: Seleucis and Pieria, Antioch ad Orontem.
Obv: ΚΑΙ Μ Ο ΔΙA ΑΝΤΩΝΙΝΟC CЄ, bare-headed and cuirassed bust right.
Rev: Large SC, Δ/Є above and beneath; all within laurel wreath interrupted by star above.
Refs: SGI 3017; BMC 20. 201,408; SNG Cop. 235; McAlee 745a.
Notes: Reverse die match to McAlee plate coin.[1]

What is so interesting this coin?

The main mint of Syria was Antioch, which produced vast numbers of bronze coins with the letters S C in a wreath on the reverse. These issues begin with Augustus and continue down to Philip I (244-249). There is scholarly disagreement as to what the abbreviation S C means on the reverse of these coins. Wayne Sayles believes this abbreviation "is probably for the same...

Hello everybody!

I present here my newest acquisition. It's a very rare hemidrachm of Antinous, struck in Alexandria, Egypt.
After I had seen a few threads here in CT, associated with my interest in Antinous' history, and reading Marguerite Yourcenar's Memoirs of Hadrian, I got carried away and started looking for something that would fit into my numismatic budget.
Unfortunately, the eye-appeal is far far from the acceptable minimum. Well, that's what we have for now.
Antinous here looks more like Roger Waters. Truly a Greek tragedy, especially considering the beauty of the boy and the ugliness of the other.


The coin has had better days. It was visibly tooled, treated of a probable bronze disease, which must have been quite aggressive on the reverse. That is, all the adjectives for many here pass far away...
But it's still an Antinous. I would not content myself with having a tessera. My numismatic focus is really in ancient...

What do you do when your purchase turns out to be not what you expected? What do you do when finding out you won't be able to use the item you bought? Bummer...right? Return it? Look for another one?

Not in this case, though.

What appeared to be just another damaged item, turned out to be not that! Why on earth did someone glue that coin there, thus damaging both pieces? Could it be removed and at least salvage the main piece? The coin was obviously a goner. Answers to these questions became clear as the investigative work continued..

What did the engraving mean? Maybe the seller could shed some light? Could Google help? Turns out it could!

First, seller provided name and little history.

Turns out this is not a damaged piece. This is an award, a golfing award, from the 1970's. The coin is supposed to be glued there. Why?

This is not just any award -There's more, the award was given to someone who made friends with...the King of Belgium. Makes sense that a coin depicting the...

Do you love provincial coins? I sure do! It's a huge area ripe with interesting niches and opportunities for contribution, discovery, and deeper knowledge if you're of an armchair academic mindset. Like rarities? Provincials are loaded with them! As a group, Provincials seems understudied compared to Imperials.

Portraiture is not the draw. Often, the portraits bear little resemblance to the Imperial portraits. It matters little-- the reverses are the most interesting part of Provincials. They give insight into what was important to that city or area. Sometimes they are just plain wacky to our modern view.

Let's see how many Roman Provincial coin cities we can cobble together here. Let's try to do it by alphabet, allowing a couple of days per letter. Inevitably there will be latecomers, omissions, or later purchases but that's okay-- just add them when you can if that letter's time has already passed. Also, it's okay if you want to post a city that someone already...

There has been much discussion on the forum lately about how easy it is to artificially tone coins and get them past the graders at NGC & PCGS. I contend that it is very difficult to get an AT/QT coin in a top tier slab whereas others think they are quite prevalent. I have decided to start this thread to see if we can help settle the debate and have a little fun in the process. Now, don't get mad, but this can't be a free for all, we gotta have some rules to the game, so here they are.

The Rules to the AT/QT game:

1) ONE COIN AT A TIME: We can't be discussing more than one coin at the same time, so if you have a coin that you want to include in the thread, please be patient and wait your turn. The rule for whose turn is next will be discussed a little later.

2) 1 POINT FOR MAJORITY RULES in 24 HOURS: Once a coin is posted, respondents may either deem the coin AT/QT (artificial/questionable toning) or NT/MA (Natural/Market Acceptable Toning). After 24 hours,...

As many of you know, my son and I have been working on cleaning and ID'ing mostly Late Roman Bronzes. Most of the coins we have in the collection are ones that we have cleaned ourselves. The vast majority of those are well...for lack of a better word...junk. We have only had a few really nice ones that were very easy for us to ID.

This has lead to a lot of sleuthing and learning, not to mention a fair share of frustration. But we have managed to do a pretty good job if I do say so myself. Well, on Halloween we received a package in the mail with some absolutely beautiful coins to identify and add to my son's collection. These are way beyond anything we have scrubbed up or purchased on our trip to Baltimore. We saw coins like this but they were not in our price range nor our current level of expertise (if you call what we have now "expertise" lol).

My son was flabbergasted and his eyes got as big as some of these coins haha. Unfortunately, since they came on Halloween, we weren't...

In the spirit of recent discussions I thought it might be interesting to ask this question - can you define artificial toning ? But not so much identifying it on given coins, but rather the methods used to artificially tone coins. Or, if you prefer, is this way or that way artificial or is it natural ?

For example, I'll start with one method I've mentioned recently in another thread - using coin albums to intentionally tone coins. With that method there's basically 2 ways to do it. You can buy the albums, that are well known for producing coins with gorgeous toning, place coins in them and simply wait for it to happen, or not happen as the case may be. But, you do this quite intentionally and for no other reason than hopefully to cause the coins to tone. Is that artificial or natural toning ?

Second way, buy the same albums, put the same coins in them, store the album in a location with high humidity and higher than normal temperatures. Is that artificial toning or is it natural ?...

Very much a work in progress ………
All comments and corrections very welcome

As Mattingly points out in "Coins of the Roman Empire in the British Museum" (BMCRE), Volume I, the main purpose of Countermarks on coins was to extend their circulation under new authority.

In his article "The Countermark PROB on Coins of Claudius I from Britain" (The Numismatic Chronicle Vol. 148 {1988}, pp. 53-61), Robert Kenyon points out that after his conquest of Britain in 42AD (and maybe planned before) Claudius issued large quantities of early OB CIVES SERVATOS (without PP) and SPES Sestertii of 41AD (minted in Rome) for use in general commerce in Britain.

All of this coinage was countermarked PROB (Probatum=approved) on the coin obverse.

It seems that there was a large amount of irregular coinage struck in Gaul with Roman Imperial approval in order to provide additional currency, especially in Britain following the...