Coin Talk

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....

I did a search and did not find anything recent about this. I don't mind sharing some chapters in my book project.

It will all come together soon. Patience is a virtue.





“The first speaker and master of ceremonies was John Stanley Rice (1899-1985). Rice, who was the primary person responsible for the 1938 75th Anniversary Reunion, and for erecting the Eternal Light Peace Memorial, was a Gettysburg resident. He was born in Adams County, Pennsylvania on January 28, 1899. John S. Rice was a Lutheran, a Democrat, a manufacturer, and a prominent fruit grower. He served in the United States Army during World War I and in the United States Army Air Corps during World War II. From 1933-1940 he was a State Senator. He lost a bid for Governor in 1946. He was a delegate to the Democratic National Conventions in 1948, 1952, 1956, and 1964. He was Secretary...

Like my thread on Medieval Books, I thought I might try to keep track of my thoughts on the various books on Ancient coins I have read. While these are not as numerous as the Medieval books, I would be happy for others to chime in (as they have done on the medieval book review post). I would just ask that we try to keep things to a similar format for consistency.

Clare Rowan, From Caesar to Augustus (c. 49 BC-AD 14): Using Coins as Sources. Guides to the Coinage of the Ancient World. Series EditorAndrew Meadows. Cambridge: University Press, 2019.
ISBN: 978-1107675698
Cost: $24.99



Grade: A

This book is a little gem on the historical background of many coins issued during the intriguing years between the rise of Julius Caesar and the reign of Augustus. Clare Rowan clearly explains how the various coins issued during this time of transition were used as a...

According to Geraldine Chimirri-Russell curator emerita for the Nickle Art Museum of the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada, certain series of ancient Celtic coins present lifelike three-dimensional images when viewed obliquely at arm’s length. This was intentional. Moreover, such presentations have been discovered on coins across cultures, showing people, animals, and buildings.

ABOVE: Illustration from page 92 of Made for Trade: A New View of Icenian Coinage by John Talbot (Oxbow, 2017). Sassanian coins with 3-dimensional oblique view.

(An earlier version of this article appeared in the Spring 2019 issue of the Mich-Matist of the Michigan State Numismatic Society.)

· Chimirri-Russell first announced her findings at the 13th International Conference on Numismatics held in Madrid, Spain, September 15-19, 2003. Her paper was titled “Changing...

Hi all,
I wanted to share my latest Mint Error acquisition. It's a beauty!
1 Cent - 1939 S Mint
MS 65 Red
With Occluded Gas Bubble on the Obverse - Planchet Error (Hard to see but it's located under LIBERTY)


From the error-ref.com website
Quote - "Definition: On rare occasions a pocket of gas forms and expands when a planchet is struck. The heat generated by the strike is deemed responsible for the gas expansion. The expanding gas pushes up the overlying metal, producing a rounded bulge with soft borders. If the roof remains intact, the error is designated an “occluded gas bubble”. If the roof explodes from the internal pressure, we call it a “ruptured gas bubble”. By definition, occluded gas bubbles are generally restricted to solid-alloy issues. While gas bubbles are sometimes seen on clad coins, these always turn out to have been caused by heat applied externally outside the Mint....

George McClellan's post inspired me to showcase some pieces issued during the Panic of 1907. The Panic was caused by a number of factors including a significant drop in the stock market, a failed attempt to take over the United Copper Company and the collapse of the Knickerbocker Trust Company in NY. The ripples of these events were felt throughout the country as depositors withdrew cash from the banking system.

The inelasticity in the money supply exacerbated the problem and led directly to the creation of the Federal Reserve System.

To put liquidity in the system local clearing houses, businesses and banks created cash substitutes to act as circulating media. The most common were circulating checks, clearing house certificates and payroll checks.


This first piece is a clearing house check (really a draft) issued through the Milwaukee Clearing House.


This is a Clearing House Certificate from San Francisco. The...

Faustina II wore her hair in more than half a dozen ways and the standard references (RIC, BMCRE, Cohen and Sear) do not typically note variants in hairstyle or assign separate catalog numbers to them. Some catalogs do, however, such as Temeryazev and Makarenko (CRE). That's why it's odd that her denarius with the VENERI AVGVSTAE reverse type is assigned two separate catalog numbers by RIC and Cohen on the basis of hairstyle, whereas CRE makes no such distinction! It's confusing not only to me, but to coin dealers when listing their wares and the curators of such websites as Online Coins of the Roman Empire (OCRE). I found this out while trying to attribute this well-worn denarius.


Faustina II, AD 147-175/6.
Roman AR denarius, 3.14 g, 17.7 mm, 12 h.
Rome, AD 161-176.
Obv: FAVSTINA AVGVSTA, bare-headed and draped bust, right, without wavy forelock.
Rev: VENERI AVGVSTAE, Venus seated left, holding Victory in extended right hand and vertical sceptre in...

Couldn't help but have my appreciation for Arab-Byzantine coins rekindled when I took these two out and put them together. It helps that they are in better condition than most. As with my Khosrau II 12 nummi coin, I find particularly interesting coinage that reflect two fundamentally different cultures, such as with the Arab-Byzantine series.

I'll link to my previous threads for the history, but I will mention that (as with other instances in history), the Muslims that conquered much of the Eastern Roman Empire and the whole of the Sassanian Empire needed to keep the native populations of these areas happy to cement their control. One way they did this was the continuation of the existing coinage styles (but with slight alterations to make them more Arab- and Muslim-friendly). The Romans kept their folles and the Persians kept their drachms (refered to as fals and dirham respectively by the Arabs). This situation lasted until the coinage reform enacted by the Umayyad caliph Abd...

Although it sounds like a band from the 60's or something, the stakes were high when Hadrianus suffered braindamage (or something like that) in 136 AD and decided to adopt Aelius as his heir. This, to the suprise and against the whishes of all those involved. Lucius Aelius Caesar never lived long enough to enjoy the purple though, as he died in 138 AD. Ouch... And this necessitated Hadrian to adopt future emperor Antoninus Pius, who in turn had to adopt Lucius Verus - son of Aelius - and Marcus Aurelius - great-nephew of Hadrian by marriage - as part of the deal. Lucius Verus however was due to the same fate as his father, although he did manage to co-rule with Marcus Aurelius for about 8 years.

With the denarius shown below added to my collection, I managed to complete one of my collecting goals: completing the Nerva-Antonine dynasty in silver. Aelius coins are not that rare, but I had to wait for quite a while to find a specimen that was within my price range and acceptable...