Coin Talk

Ever since I began collecting Roman coins I have always wanted an Alexandrian hemidrachm depicting the Pharos. It is at once both a 'grail' and personal 'white whale' of mine. Last week my dream came true!

The hemidrachms struck under Domitian with their wonderful numismatic depictions of the Pharos are extremely rare. This superb example from regnal year 12 is the third known and finest specimen of the even rarer left facing portrait variant.



Domitian
Æ Hemidrachm, 12.15g
Alexandria mint, 92-93 AD
Obv: ΑΥΤ ΚΑΙϹ ΘƐΟ(Υ) ΥΙΟϹ ΔΟΜΙΤ ϹƐΒ ΓƐΡΜ; Head of Domitian, laureate, l.
Rev: LΙΒ; Pharos
RPC 2677. Emmett 273.12 (R3).
Ex CNG eAuction 484, 27 January 2021, lot 559.

The great lighthouse of Alexandria (or Pharos) was first depicted on the city's coinage during Domitian's reign. The structure was built on Pharos Island circa 300-283 BC under the Ptolemaic dynasty and was roughly 375 years old when these coins were struck. It was one of the most...

I think this is only the second Roman Republican denarius I've bought this year. At this rate, I'll end up with only about one-third as many purchases as in 2020. As I mentioned elsewhere earlier today, I'm finding it more and more difficult to find Republican types I want in decent condition at an affordable price.

To the coin -- plus, as usual, a lengthy explanatory footnote for anyone interested in that level of detail.

Roman Republic, L. Cassius Longinus, AR Denarius, 63 or 60 BCE, Rome Mint. Obv. Veiled and diademed head of Vesta left, control-letter “A” before her, kylix (two-handled cup) behind her / Rev. Togate figure standing left, dropping a voting tablet favorable to proposed legislation, inscribed “V” (Vti Rogas [= “as you propose”]) into a cista before him, LONGIN III•V downwards behind him. Crawford 413/1, RSC I Cassia 10 (ill.), Sear RCV I 364 (ill.), Sydenham 935, Harlan, RRM II Ch. 6 at pp.49-53, BMCRR 3929 (control-letter “A”); see also id. 3930-3936...

Something really cool and unexpected arrived this morning. Obviously I ordered it, so it wasn't unexpected in the literal sense, but it is a coin completely outside the normal areas of my collecting habit. I collect Greeks and Byzantines and apart from the very rare venture into Roman coinage I haven't really been interested in anything else. As some of you may recall, I usually shop retail and I am always on the lookout for affordable retail stock as collector competition has driven auction prices up. So, one fine evening this little gem showed up in the marketplace listings and it was love at first sight. It was a case of 'shut up and get my money' as I bought it even though I am supposed to be saving for a nice Greek tet I am after. I managed to hold my excitement for a few minutes and did a bit of market research to make sure the price was fair (even though the coin was mis-attributed, but more about this later). Here it is, a lovely little drachm from Parthia, a historical...

January 3rd 250 AD
Trajan Decius orders sacrifices to be performed by everyone in the Empire to Jupiter and to the well-being of the Emperor. Only Jews were exempted to do so. The sacrifices had to be performed in the presence of a Roman magistrate and be confirmed by a certificate, called a libellus, signed and attested by the magistrate. Even if the original text of the edict has been lost, many examples of certificates have survived.


A Roman libellus, found in Egypt and dated to 250 AD. It confirmed its owner had sacrificed to the gods.

The Edict of Decius was intended to serve as an Empire-wide oath of loyalty to the new emperor, sanctified by the Roman religion. There is no evidence that Decius sought to specifically target Christianity or initiate persecution of its practitioners. An unknown number of Christians have been executed or died in prison for refusing to...

Some of the most used reference books for ancient coins are not new. This was highlighted in a recent thread on CT by @dougsmit for Severans in BMCRE and by @Orfew for Flavians in Sear. For Roman republican coins, RRC was published by Crawford in 1974 – and the many reprints since then do not add new information. Although Crawford RRC is an amazing resource, the discovery of new information didn't end in 1974.

In some cases, the evidence used to assign dates, and connect people can be very thin. This is not generally an issue if you are interested in the coins of Julius Caesar, but is a problem if you are interested in the coins of M. Plaetorius Cestianus. My latest Roman republican coin requires a bit of a deep dive, it is a coin that I am glad to have in any condition. For now I will leave the date off of the attribution. Searching ACSearch you can see some...

I normally post threads on the ancients, and, to a lesser degree, world forum sites. However, I decided to post on this forum a silver medal that I purchased back in March 2017. I am not sure if this forum or the US coins forum is most appropriate, given the non-coin nature of this medal, but I decided to post it here.

This silver medal came without the box. It weighs 21.2 grams. In terms of condition, it shows signs of some handling and cleaning hairlines.



I came across this medal while randomly going through eBay one night. I noticed that this medal was being sold by a French seller in medals based in Montpellier, France. At first glance this treasury medal looked like a typical one issued in the 1950s. The design is different from the earlier type issued in the 1940's, during the World War II in particular, as part of the effort to raise war bonds.

What makes this medal so distinctive is an engraving on the reverse panel, "Grace Kelly...

One of the beneficial attributes of steel is that it can be heat treated in numerous ways to get a wide variety of properties for many different end applications. One of these applications are the dies used to strike coins. I’ve seen terms like “hardening,” “annealing,” and “quenching” in coin-related publications before, and after working with this subject for a year and a half, I’ve gotten to learn quite a bit about how the various heat treating processes work. I thought it would be helpful to share what goes on when heat treating a coin die, like the 1820 half eagle die shown below (I believe this is the ANA’s image).





To start out, steel is characterized as an iron-carbon alloy. Other alloying elements (e.g., manganese, chromium, nickel, molybdenum, etc.) are added to achieve a wide array of properties (e.g., strength, hardness, toughness, corrosion resistance, machineability, etc.). At room temperature, steel is generally made up of two phases...

Dear Friends of ancient Mythology!

I have wanted to write an article on Ahura Mazda for a long time, but have always shied away from it because it seemed like too extensive an undertaking. Now, during my Corona time, I have decided to finally start. For this article, the subtitle of my mythology book applies especially: "Journey to a distant land"! I have 3 coins in my collection that refer to Ahura Mazda, and they are closely related, as we will see. The coin that is at the beginning of the article I have already presented once in an article about Hormisdas. But that was about the Sassanid Great King. The Sassanid Empire was the second Persian empire after the Achaemenid Empire and declined in the 7th century AD due to the expansion of the Islamic Arabs.

Coin #1
Sassanid Empire, Hormizd II, 309-309 AD.
AR - Drachm, 3.48g, 27.2mm, 90°.
Obv.: Legend in Pahlevi, abbreviated and corrupted:
　 　 ly. .KLM n . KLM [ydzmrhw'] y gb n s d [y?]z m
　 (= "The worshipper of...

Geopolitics can be a troublesome thing. Today's friend is tomorrow's enemy, yesterday's rival is today's trade partner. This is certainly true of our times and perhaps was even truer in the ancient world. When it comes to forming complicated alliances the Byzantine Empire is among the first to come to mind, with its biggest frienemy Venice a close second. Their relationship has always been a very complex one, and my latest arrivals, one silver coin from the Byzantine capital and another one from the watery Italian city-state will allow me to research their monetary and cultural connections to some degree of detail. The coinage of these two empires shares many common characteristics and these two coins are no exception despite that they were minted a few centuries apart:


(Tran. Legends: OBV=Jesus Christ conquers, REV= John emperor king of the Romans)


(Legends: OBV=RAGENO S.M.VENETI, REV= IC XC)

My only...