Coin Talk

Most of us on this site are interested in ancient history as well as coins. As we read about the people who wind up on those coins it becomes painfully obvious that most of them are not the kind of people we would like to have move in next door. Of course by the behavioral standards of that day, much of what they did would not have been reprehensible or at least, not as morally repugnant as we would see it.

In your study of ancient history who would you consider to be the most nasty, brutish (but not short), vicious, dangerous, callous, malign, menacing monarch of ancient or medieval times and do you have a coin or two of such maleficent rulers?

My choice may not immediately come to mind as one of those kind of rulers. it is the Roman emperor, Caracalla (198-217). I guess his murdering his little brother (Geta) by dragging him out of the arms of their mother to do so, does get one's attention. To make sure he did not take too much heat from that, he exterminated thousands of...

Following up from posts on the 1000 Yen banknote and the 2000 Yen banknote, here is the 5000 Japanese Yen banknote. Worth $45.39 US as of this moment, this note circulates widely in Japan and its high usage and larger denomination means that it's scattered with even more anti-counterfeit devices than the 1000 Yen note.



日本銀行券 (Nipponginkōken) - Bank of Japan banknote
五千円 (sen'en) - 5000 Yen
日本銀行 (Nipponginkō) - Bank of Japan
樋口一葉 Higuchi Ichiyō- Meiji Period writer - she lived for only 24 years but her short stories remain among the most famous in Japan and many have been made into movies
国立印刷局製造 (Kokuritsu insatsu-kyoku seizō) -...

While I was at FUN, a dealer friend bought a large hoard of about 200 Da Quan Wu Shi coins. This hoard was intact, never picked through, and never cleaned. Since I love going through hoards, I looked through all of the coins, and presented here are my observations. I bought 24 of the coins.

The vast majority were nice official issues. Many were rather crusty or had problems such as cracks, holes, etc. Pictured here are the nicest. Notice how bold the inscriptions and rims are, and how symmetric the characters are. These all weighed over 5 grams, with the heaviest being about 9.7 grams.



Closeup of the two nicest from the hoard so that the style is clear:



Wang Mang’s rule was quite turbulent and marked by rampant counterfeiting. With several of his spade types, there are more extant contemporary counterfeits than official issues, which makes finding official...

Vesta is the Roman version of the Greek goddess Hestia, the goddess of family values and domestic life (i.e. the hearth). Vesta was considered by the Romans to be a role-model for women and as such, she appears frequently on coins of the Roman empresses. As a model for the Roman matron, she is always depicted wearing the stola and palla and holding some combination of a patera, simpulum, scepter (hasta pura), torch, or Palladium. The Palladium was a statue of Athena (Roman Minerva) believed to have been brought by Æneas from Troy.


Lucilla, AD 164-169.
Roman Æ As, 11.24 g, 25.2 mm, 6 h.
Rome, AD 164-166.
Obv: LVCILLAE AVG ANTONINI AVG F, bare-headed and draped bust, right.
Rev: VESTA S C, Vesta standing left,...

Isis appears on few Roman imperial issues. The most famous imperial coin to depict the Egyptian goddess is a silver denarius of Julia Domna, wife of Septimius Severus, dated by the British Museum to the period 196-202. It was issued by two mints, the main mint in Rome and by an unknown eastern mint, traditionally attributed to Laodicea but more recently to Antioch.


Julia Domna, AD 193-217.
Roman AR denarius, 3.61 g, 17.7 mm, 12 h.
Rome, AD 196-202.
Obv: IVLIA AVGVSTA, bare-headed and draped bust, right.
Rev: SAECVLI FELICITAS, Isis, wearing polos, standing right, foot on prow, nursing infant Horus; behind them, a ship’s rudder leans against an altar.
Refs: RIC 577; BMCRE 75-82; Hill 504; Cohen 174; RCV 6606.


Julia Domna, AD 193-217.
Roman AR denarius, 3.07 g, 18.2 mm, 12 h.
Uncertain Eastern mint (Antioch?), AD 196-202.
Obv: IVLIA AVGVSTA, bare-headed and draped bust, right.
Rev: SAECVLI FELICITAS, Isis, wearing polos,...

Hey all, I'm new to this forum! A bit about myself: I've been collecting ancient coins for nearly 20 years, caught the bug as a kid when my parents gave me a few Roman bronze coins they purchased while traveling in France. I've built up and sold off several small collections at this point, and for a long time I was only interested in Greek silver. Recently I've started a new collection focusing on sestertii from the 2nd/3rd century.

I believe this Septimius sestertius is a rare bust type, I've only found one near die match for it in online auction records. I've found a number of die matches for the reverse. There are several similar coins in the online British Museum catalog, though they are IMP V. I was hoping some of the experienced members might take a look and give me their opinions on the coin. This is the dealer photo, I do not have the coin in hand yet.



Septimius Severus, Æ Sestertius, Rome, 194-195 AD. L SEPT SEV PERT AVG IMP IIII,...

Dear Friends of ancient mythology!

Many coins of Thrace depict snakes. Here I have a type from Augusta Trajana:

Thrace, Augusta Trajana, Geta, AD 209-212
AE 30, 16.5g, 225°
obv. AVT K Π CEΠT - IMOC ΓETAC
Bust, cuirassed, seen from behind, laureate, r.
rev. AVΓOVCTHC - TPAIANHC
Snake, radiate and with nimbus, in four elaborated coils erected r.
ref. Schönert-Geiss 496 (1 ex. only!); Varbanov 1356
very rare, about EF, brown patina


On ancient coins we find many depictions of snakes. I remind of the snake as attribute of Salus, or the famous Cistophori where a snake is climbing out of a Cista mystica, the snake basket, belonging to the cult of Dionysos and playing an important role in the Eleusinic Mysteries too. And don't forget the Alexandrian Agathodaimon. But this is not the matter with the snake on this coin. It is a Pontic type.

There is some evidence that the snake erecting here in four elaborated coils and has a radiate head with nimbus is...

2 days ago I was browsing a site and saw this coin. It brought back to mind a recurring theme of late. It seems I can go years without seeing particular coins I am interested in and then all of a sudden several appear seemingly all at once. I am not sure what is responsible for this phenomenon but it is certainly is interesting.

This coin is a case in point. Several months ago I came upon an auction on Heritage for a Domitian RIC 72 from the Morris collection. It was the first time in 4 years that I saw one come up for auction. So naturally I pursued it and won it. It is supposedly R2-very few examples known. I believed this because I had never seen one come to market until the Morris collection example.

A couple of months later another example appeared at Heritage and sold for a very respectable price. It commanded quite a lot of attention. I did not buy this one since as much as I would have liked to, I cannot buy every coin I like.

A couple of months ago I was checking the...

Echoes of Byzantium

I originally posted this in Coin Chat, but I think it sits best in Ancients - even though this post is not specifically devoted solely to ancient coins. Anyway...

As should be no surprise to anyone who knows me on this forum, I have a passion for history, especially the Eastern Roman Empire/Byzantine Empire, and ancient Greece.

All my Christmases came true late last year, when the other half agreed to a holiday to Greece completely devoted to history (and food and wine). I will do another post on ancient Greece, but this one focusses on the Eastern Roman Empire/Byzantine Empire.

On our Byzantine tour, we visited Athens (more known for ancient Greece, but there is a cultural museum dedicated to the Eastern Roman Empire/Byzantine), Meteora, Thessaloniki (the logic being it was the “second capital” of Byzantium), and Mt Athos.

Here are some historical highlights from the trip, including (of course) coins.

Byzantine architecture

Byzantine...

This has been an interesting challenge. Haven't completed it yet but it seems somewhat doable.



The portrait was to feature Sun Yat Sen who was the first president of the Republic of China. These coins were struck when China was literally falling apart as various provinces were striking their own coinage. A unified coinage was required and this meant huge production was required. The only mint that could fulfill this was from the other end of the world - Austria (!). This can be easily identified by the "A" mintmark.

Mintmark "A". 20 fen with mintmark "A" can be surprisingly difficult to find.



Something interesting to note is that master dies were prepared in Philadelphia and shipped to Shanghai. Coins struck in Austria do have some minor differences.

Even at the start of this coinage, nickel coins were meant to be struck in pure nickel. However at Tientsin mint, 1936...