Commodus 177-192 AD Denarius 186-189 AD ROME M COMM ANT P FEL AVG BRIT, laureate head right ROMAE AE TERNAE, Roma seated left holding Victory and scepter, C V P P in ex. I don't know if I've ever posted this one. It's one my my nicer coins, and my best looking denarius. I have bee trying to make my gallery more uniform looking and snapped a new photo of this one. Its still not as good as Doug's photo though.
Already mentioned I preferred Dougs pic of it but its still a decent shot for your photo style. Nice coin in general. Were both redoing our galleries, lol. Very time consuming .
The only coins I am not too keen on changing are the ones with high views/comments. Hate to lose them. Alot of it is republicans & few imperials.
How could I have let that coin go? I remember what we traded. Do you? Commodus was at one time more an interest of mine than recently so I had enough variety to write a bigger than usual page:http://www.forumancientcoins.com/dougsmith/comm.html A short while back I dabbled in photos on a gray background and decided I preferred the black partly because I really, really don't want to reshoot all my coins to match.
Now that photo helps a lot Randy. I like the coin a lot more with this photo. Yeah, Doug made a mistake there.
I am. I wonder if anyone else here would understand trading a denarius of Commodus for a Constantine II AE3 with unclear workshop letter and a scratch on the face? Who is crazy?
Well, that reverse does not look common. I am sure you can tell us more, but that is what I see, a scarcer Caesar with an unusual reverse.
Thanks I thought about posting a cryptic message about what they have in common, but I'll wait for Doug to explain why he loves his coin edit:
Cryptic message? How is this? The mintmark on this common reverse of a common Caesar is what is special. It is found on two reverses for all of the active rulers at that time from the Rome mint. This is the Vota in wreath type. The other type, like the Commodus, is Romae Aeternae. I don't have it in Constantine II but here is my Constantine I: Reading the mintmark: R is for Rome (Roma) followed by a ligature of Greek letters EPWC or Eros the Greek word for love. What is Latin for love? Amor. If you spell Amor backwards you get Roma. This is the strangest mintmark I know. Following the ligature is a workshop letter completely illegible on the coin I got from Randy and half off (possibly S?) on the Constantine I. Neither of these are very nice examples but fully legible and high grade examples sell well when they come up. I lost a really nice one that went over $200 once. See RIC Volume VII pages 317-320. If you get one trade me. I have more Commodus denarii. :yes:
I've seen a few examples online (all sold) so it doesn't seem too rare that you couldn't find more. But it is more interesting than another r5 I have, with just a rare officina letter.
heres a little more "Part of this mint mark is a cryptogram, and is Greek for eros, which in Latin is amor. Amor and Roma are palindromes-- they read the same backward or forward. Amor was the secret name of Rome. This may have been an attempt by the pagan aristocracy of Rome to use the old religion of mystery and romance to confront the pro-Christian policies of Constantine.¹ The first letter in this mintmark is the Latin letter “R”, for Rome. The next symbol is a ligature, which consists of two Greek letters epsilon and rho, and then an upward sweep which transforms the ligature into the Greek letter omega. What looks like a “C’ is actually the Greek letter sigma. The last letter is the Latin “Q’, which is the officina. The Greek cryptogram section reads epsilon rho omega sigma or Eros." http://www.constantinethegreatcoins.com/ROMAE/
