Coin Talk

One of my latest acquistions has proven to be quite a mystery. It's a denarius of Pescennius Niger. According to the auctioneer, the coin is unpublished, and possibly unique, which however is not unique when it comes to denari of Pescennius Niger, I’ve noticed. Also, I think the auctioneer made a mistake in their description, and since I lack quite a few reference books I turn to the members of this board and their infinite wisdom for help.

First, the coin in question:


Now for the mystery. The description of the auctioneer is the following: "Pescennius Niger AR Denarius. Caesarea(?), AD 193-194. [IMP CA]ES C PESC NIGER IVST AVG, laureate head to right / [V]IRTVTI AVG, Mars standing facing, helmeted, with cloak over shoulder, head to right, holding spear and parazonium. Unpublished; for discussion of the criteria for distinguishing coins struck at Caesarea in Cappadocia, cf. J. Van Heesch, “Les Ateliers Monétaires de Pescennius Niger” in RBN 124...

We all hope that "Fortuna" or good karma or heaven, smiles upon us and bring us good things. In the case of historians they often show us why historical characters were so favored (or not) in this life. Today, I'd like us to take a look at the life of a person most numismatists of ancient coins recognize, the Roman empress, Julia Domna.

Julia Domna's coins are among the better known coins of Ancient Rome but her biographers are not, as they are not numerous or as well known. For the empress we have the Fourth century Historia Augusta, which mentions her, but the author(s) who put together that compilation of stories is not considered reliable by later historians. We do have, however, two historians, both writing in Greek, Herodian and Cassius Dio, who actually lived during her lifetime and both are today considered to be fairly accurate recorders (if possibly melodramatic) of what they saw. Herodian was at one time dismissed as too anecdotal but recent finds and discoveries...

In 2004 and 2005 the US Mint decided to change the look of the nickel. The full profile of Jefferson looking to the left has been on the nickel since the end of the Buffalo Nickel. This look first appeared in 1938 and the last year of this obverse was 2004.

The westward journey Nichols commemorated the bicentennial of the Louisiana purchase and the journey of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark explore that territory, which was vast.

2004 the Louisiana Purchase/Peace Medal was adapted from the reverse of the original Indian Peace medal that was commission for that expedition. The obverse has the portrait of Thomas Jefferson as is was in 1938 when this nickel first appeared in circulation. The reverse contained the symbols of peace, two hands shaking and 2 crossed peace pipes.

The Keelboat reverse displays the boat that carried the Lewis and Clark expedition through the rivers of the newly purchased Louisiana Territory. This boat was built to the specifications of Captain Lewis....

Glykon was an ancient snake god with a large and influential cult within the Roman Empire in the 2nd and 3rd centuries. Almost everything we know about the cult comes from a work by the 2nd century satirist Lucian called Ἀλέξανδρος ἢ Ψευδομάντις (Alexander, or the False Prophet). Lucian claimed Glykon was created in the mid-2nd century by the Greek cult leader, Alexander of Abonoteichos. Lucian called Alexander a false prophet and denounced the whole cult as being based on a hoax: Glykon himself was supposedly a hand puppet made of linen.

Alexander claimed that his god Glykon was an incarnation of Asklepios, the Greek god of healing. According to the cult's mythology, Alexander had foretold the coming of a new incarnation of Asklepios. When the people gathered in the marketplace of Abonoteichos at noon, when the incarnation was supposed to occur, Alexander produced a goose egg and sliced it open, revealing the god within. Within a week it grew to the size of a man with the...

With the hundreds of thousands of dies used by the Romans to produce the coins, we hardly have anything left, a handful at most. And it must be admitted that many of these dies were those made by ancient forgers or modern counterfeiters. This is quite normal given the fact that the normal fate of a coin die was either to break naturally or to be broken after use to avoid counterfeiting. Conversely, the discovery of many Gallic dies constitutes an indicator of a strike much less subject to control, perhaps of a private nature.


Cavino's die, BNF Paris.

The study of monetary dies constitutes the very foundation of a large number of numismatic research and in any case of those aimed at providing the corpus of a coinage. This tool was not popularized until the end of the 19th century, at a time when the development of photography made it possible to compare specimens preserved in different places. The study of dies quickly established itself as a...

Thanks to all of you for your good wishes. I've been feeling better the last couple of days.

I still have to write up the three new Roman Republican denarii I've bought in the last two months, but this new coin arrived in the mail yesterday, so I'll post it first. It's quite worn, but the design is still clear, and I couldn't resist buying it! It's my first elephant quadriga (or biga) from any issuer -- and anyone who knows me at all knows how much I like coins with animal reverses, with a special fondness for elephants! -- as well as my first Roman Alexandrian coin of Trajan, and my first Roman Alexandrian bronze drachm. Most of the Roman Alexandrian coins I already had were from Hadrian (7) and Antoninus Pius (3) (along with a scattering of individual coins from Claudius, Nero, and later emperors like Elagabalus, Claudius II, and Probus), and all were tetradrachms, diobols, or obols. I've wanted to buy at least one drachm for some time -- I've always found it a bit odd that the...

Let's see your Antonine coins with "all-round" legends or anything you feel is relevant!

As Strack notes,[1] a change in the style of inscriptions occurs in the gold and silver issues of the Antonine coinage in the very last tribunician year (TR POT XXIIII) of Pius' reign, December 160 – 17 March 161. Specifically, the inscriptions of this period are characterized by larger than normal letters, which are arranged all around the circumference of the coin, with no break above the portrait or reverse type. An example of a denarius of Antoninus Pius from this period with a reverse type relevant to the coins of Faustina II is illustrated below.[2]

Here is another sneak peek of a new NGC custom registry set that I am working on. Please feel free to share anything related!

So far, most of the medals I have presented have been the work of one of Soho's most prolific engravers, Conrad Heinrich Küchler. Luckily, a lot of the original correspondence relating to those pieces has been detailed in numerous publications and online databases, which has served to further my investigation. The same cannot be said for this medal, as it was engraved by a less well-known yet still influential Soho engraver, John Phillip. Given the lack of digitalized contemporary documents and nearly no mention of the piece in published works, I decided to focus my efforts on a different tool, auction catalogs. Scouring auction archives and dealer inventories that I have at my disposal led to an interesting discovery. Across these sources, no less than three different engravers were credited for the obverse and...

Sometimes losers win and winners lose.
Case in point, both the first of the awful Ptolemies beats up a pretty good descendant of Seleukos and then the Romans put and end to Antigonid, as well as Macedonian, rule in Macedon on the same day that you and I are living, breathing, drinking and farting in some 2238 and 2189 years later!

This "father loving" turd:

Ptolemy IV Philopator
222-205/4 BCE
Æ (11.5mm, 1.39 g, 12h). Uncertain mint on Cyprus. Diademed head of female (Aphrodite/Arsinoe III or Cleopatra VII?) right / Filleted cornucopia. Svoronos 1161; SNG Copenhagen 649. VF


Beats this Rockstar:

Antiochos III Megas
Seleukid Kingdom. Uncertain (military) mint 60. 223-187 BC. Struck 202-187 BC Bronze Æ 17mm., 4,60g. Macedonian shield with gorgoneion in central boss / ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ ΑNΤΙΟΧΟΥ, elephant walking right, anchor above, monogram of ΠΑ below. very fine SC 1089.3a; HGC 9, 490
Former: Savoca

Here and in this...

"True Dollar" of the Middle Ages
Many coins have been dubbed the "dollar" of the middle ages, almost always byzantine and gold. What is meant by this is that the coinage was widely available, widely accepted, and widely used. The usual suspects pointed to are the solidus and hyperpyron, both common today but infact were not used much by the lower rungs of society (aka the majority of people). Such coinage was typically used by the wealthy to pay taxes and the Byzantine government went out of its way to limit people's access to gold. It was discouraged to use in private transactions and outright banned from leaving the empires border. The Byzantine government would often require that those individual with higher tax rates (upper middle and wealthy) to pay their taxes in gold and all change paid back would be in bronze.

Byzantine to USD Exchange Rate
The US dollar, although sharing similarities with byzantine gold, is also quite different. Both were/are the means to...