Coin Talk

Unpacking a Greek Inscription on a provincial AE 33 of Tarsus

I was enamored by the hunting scene on the reverse of this sestertius-sized provincial of Trajan Decius minted in Tarsus and acquired it earlier today from a British auction firm. Confused by the alphabet soup of abbreviations in its inscription, I cracked out BMC 21 and Sear and read the introductory materials to learn more about it. The research proved fruitful and I'd like to share what I learned about the various letters and abbreviations.


Trajan Decius. AD 249-251.
Roman provincial Æ 33 mm, 18.78 g.
Cilicia, Tarsus, AD 249-251.
Obv: ΑV ΚΑΙ Γ ΜЄϹ ΚVΙΝ ΔЄΚΙΟϹ ΤΡΑΙΑΝΟϹ, Π Π, radiate, draped, and cuirassed bust right.
Rev: ΤΑΡϹΟV ΜΗΤΡΟΠΟΛЄΩϹ Γ Β, Α Μ Κ. Artemis standing right, drawing arrow from quiver and holding bow and arrow; at feet on either side, deer standing left and dog running right with raised...

Dear Friends of ancient mythology!

I want to post a series of articles about coins from Alexandria. Here is the first one.

The Coin:
Egypt, Alexandria, Hadrian, AD 117-138
AE - tetradrachm, 24mm, 12.82g, 330°
struck AD 127/8 (year 12)
Obv.: AVT KAI - TPAI AΔPIA CEB
Bust, draped and cuirassed, seen from behind, laureate, r.
Rev.: L ΔΩΔE - KATOV (year 12)
God Ptah-Sokar- Osiris, wrapped in mummy bandages, bearded, sun disk on
head, stg. r., holding with both hands sceptre with jackal head (Anubis sceptre)
Ref.: Milne 1262; Köln 982; Emmet 883; BMC 637; Dattari 1445; Hunter 637;
Mionnet 1050
Rare, VF


The Creator God Ptah, the composer, ist one of oldest Egyptian gods. He is known from the 1st dynasty and his main cult location was Memphis, the metropolis of the old Empire of Lower Egypt. It is said that he has ruled already 9000 years previous to all other gods.

Nevertheless he never was member of the first rank of Egyptian gods. He always...

This is a small AE coin, 10x12mm 1.15g that caught my attention with the odd looking plant on the reverse. Not having much experience with Greek coins, I needed somewhere to start. It didn't take long to find some info, a quick search in Coryssa with a weight range (0.5-2.0g) and "Tyche" found a few coins and one close to this one helped narrow down region and reverse description. This site then gave some additional help.

Phoenicia, Arados 142 - 146 BC
AE 12x10mm 1.15g, Hemichalkous
Obv: Turreted head of Tyche right, chignon & braided ponytail, palm frond behind.
Rev: Aphlaston (Aplustre), Phoenician letters in left field, Aradian era date right

I'm not certain of the date and legends, but it seems to fall somewhere in the 142-146 BC range based on other...

I spent much of today at the Baltimore Whitman Coin Expo, arriving around 10:45 AM and leaving about 4:15 PM, with only a short break for lunch about 2 PM. Overall, the show seemed pretty active, with most of the dealers that I checked out (mainly in the Ancients and World sections) having at least one customer most of the time. Had good conversations with a number of dealers, especially Tom Wood of Ephesus Numismatics and Allen G. Berman. (Tom Wood was especially talkative, and we had a good discussion of Nabataean history, numismatic references, and more.) I bought quite a few coins, none of them budget-busters but lots of very decent, meat-and-potatoes (by my standards) coins, plus some cheap ones just for fun. I took quick photos of all of them to share here. I apologize for the poor photo quality, but a) I was rushed, and b) it's already past sunset, so I couldn't use sunlight as I usually do for my coin photos.

First, three silver drachms from Allen G. Berman:...

The Hudson-Fulton Celebration from September 25 to October 9, 1909 in New York and New Jersey was an elaborate commemoration of the 300th anniversary of Henry Hudson's discovery of the Hudson River and the 100th anniversary of Robert Fulton's first successful commercial application of the paddle steamer. The maritime achievements of Hudson and Fulton foreshadowed the importance of the river to New York's progress and identity. Organizers used the event not only to display the success of the two men, but also the status of New York City as a world city and the achievements of its citizens. This was kind of New York City’s coming out party on the world stage.

In conjunction with this exhibition the American Numismatic Society (ANS) commissioned a medal. The medal was designed by Emil Fuchs and struck by Whitehead and Hoag.



Obverse: Henry Hudson and sailors on the Halve Maen watch the hoisting of a heavy article from outside the ship. Around top,...

During my research on Gothic imitative coinage I came across these two coins:

Nr.1 (weight: 5,54 g) was found in the western Ukraine (Chernivtsi region, Sokiryansky district) and was identified as the barbaric imitation of a Roman Aureus.



Nr.2 (weight 5,49 g) was sold as a genuine Aureus of Maximianus (RIC 610, from the Cyzikus mint) by Nomos for 2.200 SFR:



Now tell me, doesn´t this look like the very same coin with the traces of mounting on the obverse and the detail below the figure on the reverse filed away?

If so, what is this? To me the obverse looks official in style, while the reverse has a "first generation barbarian" appeal.

While working on my Roman Imperial set of each individual as Caesar / Augustus / Divus, I came to realize that despite the impressive historical record that Roman coins leave for us, sometimes the pages of history and the pieces of metal in our trays don't always match up. Without going into the esoterics of history, I noticed that there were many holes in my set that history tells us shouldn't be holes.

A few off the top of my head:

- Given that Augustus allowed his BFF provincial governors to strike coins, and that so many provincial coins were made for Gaius and Lucius, why were none made for Nero Claudius Drusus while he was Caesar?

- With the sole exceptions of Vindex and Clodius Macer, how come no usurpers struck coins until the 193-197 AD civil wars? Avidius Cassius, in particular, seems like he should have issued coins?

- Even though Lucius Verus clearly took a back seat to Marcus Aurelius, I was surprised to learn that there is not a single extant coin of Verus struck...

Philip II Tetradrachm Lifetime Issue
Philip II Tetradrachm Lifetime Issue Amphipolis Mint, 355-349/8.
O: Laureate head of Zeus to right.
R: ΦΙΛΙΠ ΠΟΥ Philip II, wearing kausia and chlamys and raising his right hand in salute, riding to left; horizontal club below belly.
- Le Rider 96-108

The reverse is a representation of the King’s arrival on his accession to the throne, dressed in traditional Macedonian garb.

Early posthumous issue:

Silver Tetradrachm, Amphipolis mint. Early posthumous issue, struck under Kassander.
O: Zeus right wearing laurel wreath with berries.
R: Φ I Λ I Π - Π OY (Of Philip) Naked youth on horse prancing right holding long palm branch and reins; aplustre below; Γ under foreleg.
-Rider pl. 46, 18; SNG ANS 740. Light golden toning.

Plutarch (Alex., 3)
"To Philip, however, who had just taken Potidaea, there came three messages at the same time: the first that Parmenio had conquered the...

We all have in our collections coins featuring the famous recurring symbol : the cornucopia.
It is a representation of abundance, fecundity, fertility and happiness. Derived from the latin cornu meaning “horn”, and copiae meaning “plenty”, it has long been used as a common harvest symbol associated with a plentiful bounty. What’s his origin ? Once again we have to turn to the mythology to find an explanation. It seems that there are 2 possibilities :

1) Amalthea (a goat and the nurse of Zeus ) accidentally broke off one of her horns. Zeus felt terrible for her and so he promised that the horn would always bring her what she need.
2) Another version actually makes it the horn that Heracles snatched from Achelous (when he was transformed into a bull) during his victory over the river god.
Anyway one thing is for sure ; The cornucopia appears, in the fifth century BC, as an attribute of the god Hades. The infernal ruler is represented with this object a...

Hi all, so it has been a rather slow day at work which allowed me to spend a bit of time on a project: trying to predict a hammer price based on freely available data. This is probably impossible to do, but I tried it nonetheless and had some fun doing it.

METHODS:
Data:
Freely available data on SixBid (https://www.sixbid-coin-archive.com/#/en/search?currency=eur) with currency automatically recalculated to EUR to make life a bit easier. For the case studies, two search strings were used: 1) "caesar denarius elephant" and 2) "augustus denarius comet ivlivs"
Data is presented on SixBid in a more or less structured manner. First, the entire webpage was copy-pasted to google sheets. Using various (not super state of the art methods), data on hammer price, estimated price, auction house, date, grade (0=missing, 1= good, 2=fine, 3=very fine, 4=extremely fine, 5=mint state; or synonyms), NGC certificate (y/n) and provenance information (y/n) was extracted....