Coin Talk

In my recent "Snakes of the Roman Republic" thread, @Alegandron posted a cistophoric tetradrachm from Mysia in Pergamon from 85-76 BCE -- a period when that area belonged to the Roman Republic. See https://www.cointalk.com/threads/snakes-of-the-roman-republic.361571/#post-4564530 . I had never seen that kind of coin before -- only cistophoric tetradrachms from the Imperial period -- and thought it was beautiful. I knew I wanted one like it. So I purchased this coin, and it arrived the other day:

Lydia, Tralleis/Tralles, AR Cistophoric Tetradrachm, 126/125 BCE, Ptol-, Magistrate. Obv. Cista mystica with lid ajar and serpent emerging; all within ivy wreath / Rev. Bowcase (gorytos) with two serpents (one to left and one to right, heads at top); H [= date = Year 8 = 126/125 BCE] over ΠTOΛ [PTOL] above, between serpents’ heads; TPAΛ [TRAL] in left field; to right, Dionysus in short chiton standing facing, head left, holding thyrsos in right hand and...

As Father's Day weekend is now upon us, I want to start off by saying Happy Fathers Day to all of the Dad’s of Coin Talk! In honor of Father’s Day, I wanted to share something I wrote about a series of father/ son emperors, whose lives ended in tragedy (accompanied by recent coin acquisitions of each pair).

As fathers day approaches, i cant help but to think of the people who do not have good relationships with their fathers or their children. As an optimist, I would ask these people to look on the bright side. Read this article, and realize things could probably be worse and unlike these figures, you can still change your fate.

Before I dive into these figures, I want to note that I will be sharing the different historical possibilities for each of them. Roman History is extremely muddy, and the most often used sources are often tainted with political bias (or the possibility of such bias).

Marcus Julius Philippus, or as we know him, Philip the Arab/ Philip I. 244-249 AD...

I posted this a few days ago on the PCGS forum, so a handful of you have probably already seen this. Hopefully, the rest of you find this cool. Recently, I found myself looking into when the Mint Director's office first got a typewriter. I blame the NNP and RogerB for this, as the repository of Mint paperwork there is rather vast and is likely to make you think you can find out anything if you spend enough time careening down that rabbit hole. What started this was a typed order for dies to be sent to San Francisco for 1888.



I'm thinking to myself that's pretty early in typewriter history and wondered when the Mint Director's office first got one, what kind, and what help the archives would be in figuring this out. Of course, I didn't think it to myself, I thought it out loud, by which I mean I posted it to the thread on VAMWorld where the letter appeared. Shortly thereafter, Roger posted this from...

Last year I started a new chapter in my numismatic foray, a venture into an older interest that I had but didn't quite pursue: the coinage of the Netherlands.

The field is as complex as the French royal and seigneurial coinages, with many extraordinary and interesting parts. One of them I have tried to reveal in my last entry here about Albrecht van Beieren (Albert of Bavaria) as Ruwaard and then Lord of Hainaut during one of the most economically lucrative periods in the history of the Netherlands.

This entry is focused on an earlier period, marked in part by the legacy of a great (or infamous) crusader lord Baudouin IX de Flandre (VI de Hainaut), better known as Baldwin of Flanders, the first Latin Emperor of Constantinople (1204-1205).

Baudouin had two daughters, who both succeeded him in the Netherlands, while his brother Henry succeeded him in Constantinople. Jeanne ruled Flanders...

Dear Friends of ancient mythology!

Until today I have presented only coins from my collection. Today I must show another coin from CoinArchives because my own coin is too worn to give a good scan. Beg your pardon in advance!

The Coin:
Thessaly, Thebens, 302-186 BC
AE 23, 7.63g
Obv.: head of Demeter, veiled and crowned with grain-wreath, l.
Rev.: ΘHBAIΩN
Protesilaos, in military cloak and helmeted, armed with sword and shield, jumping from a ship's prow to l. on the beach.
Ref.: Rogers 550; BMC 50; Moustaka 92; SNG Copenhagen 261
extremely rare, VF

Mythology:
The depiction on the reverse is playing at the beginning of the Troyan War. It shows the heroe Protesilaos jumping as the first Greek on the Troyan beach where he was killed as the first of the Greeks. Protesilaos, who is said to have been a suitor of Helena, led the men of Phylake (which later was incorporated in Thebens) on forty ships to Troy, even though he was just married...

(If I wasn't going to risk calling a thread "Republican snakes," I certainly wasn't going to do the equivalent with boars and pigs, etc.!)

I received this coin today from CGB Numismatics in Paris, and am very pleased with it. Yes, the boar is off-center on the reverse and the tip of his snout is cut off a little, but most of it shows, and I've seen plenty of examples of this coin-type with the entire snout missing. (I've been looking for one to buy for a while, to add to my little collection of Roman Republican and other ancient coins with animal reverses.)

Roman Republic, Marcus Volteius, AR Denarius, 78 BCE (Crawford) or 75 BCE (Harlan). Obv. Head of young Hercules, wearing lion’s skin headdress, right / The Erymanthian boar running right; M•VOLTEI•M•F in exergue. Crawford 385/2; RSC I Volteia 2; BMCRR 3158, Sear RCV I 313 (ill.); Harlan, RRM I Ch. 12, pp. 62-79 at pp. 74-77 [Michael Harlan, Roman Republican Moneyers and their Coins, 81 BCE-64 BCE (2012)], Sydenham...

As the Major League Baseball owners and players debate whether or not there will be a season, I thought it would be appropriate to look and one of baseball’s earliest collectables, the Springfield, Massachusetts baseball medal. This piece, which was issued in 1861 at the dawn of the Civil War, provides us with a glimpse of mid 19th century American life. In those days, baseball was not just a game that children and adult professional baseball players played that a much larger number of fans only watched. It was a sport that provided the nucleus for social clubs that gathered for recreational activities the year round. In fact some clubs spent so much time having parties, dances and dinners that they almost forgot about the games on the field!

Baseball has been popular in New England for many years. In the early 1800s, New Englanders played games such as rounders, town ball, and three old cat, which were early versions of the game.

In the...

During times of stress, and sometimes during of poor management, nations have resorted to issuing fiat paper money to pay their bills. Modern economic theory now says that this system can work if it is done on moderation. Money does not have to be backed by gold or silver to hold its value. The trick is to keep the amount of money in circulation (called the money supply) in proportion to the size and grownth of the nation’s economy.

By 1863, The Confederate States of American had been issuing large quantities of fait currency for two years. The Confederate Secretary of the Treasury, Christopher Memminger, knew that he had to get a handle on the amount of money that was in circulation. Inflation was already out of the control, and issuing more currency would only make it worse. His plan was to date stamp the notes.

The Confederate Government approved the issuance of $50 million per month in notes in denominations from $5 to $100 on March 23, 1863. In addition,...

When I was a kid, collecting US pennies and the like, and poring over the 1964 "Redbook" I would come upon coins that were so rare that instead of a price, all I would see is a line. To me that meant something mysterious, a coin I would never be able to buy, forgetting of course that something like 99.9% of the coins in the book were beyond my means - in those days collecting was going through hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pennies - assuming I was lucky enough to find the pennies to go through.

Of course for ancient coins the "line," meaning price, for an extremely rare coin is kind of meaningless - even a collector of modest means is quite capable of owning extremely rare, even unique coins. However, until I ended up with the coin that is the subject of this article I did not own a coin that would I ever call "line worthy" - even if its value doesn't approach the US coins in the Redbook whose price is designated by a line.

This is an As of Clodius Albinus, as Augustus,...

For more info on the photo and balloon rides see https://cappadociaballoonflights.com/

With the evolving global pandemic, it seems unlikely that much leisure travel will be part of my near term plans. The phrase, "may you live in interesting times", has come to mind too often in recent months. I find this photo of balloons in Cappadocia uplifting and spectacular. Cappadocia, at least from travel websites, sounds like a great vacation with balloon rides, Mt. Erciyes (Argaeus), hiking, carved rock dwellings of troglodytes and Christians, or a recently discovered underground city, reported to be larger than Derinkuyu, about 1.5 hours from Kayseri, Turkey, aka Caesarea.

A coin from Cappadocia...