Ancient Coins: Newest Acquisitions

1987
Part 1. Greek and Coins of Seleucid Kings


Part 2. Roman & Byzantine 1987

 

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There are several coins with the horse head design from the ancient Greek times. There is a really nice example for sale in the current Pegasi auction/buy catalog. I think it is from Thessaly or Thrace about 400 BC. I believe that there is also a New Jersey colonial with the horse head design. However, when I saw the horse head coin in this thread, the first thing I thought of was “The Godfather”.

 

Yessss, and the horse head was on the reverse of most coins from ancient Carthage too. :yes:

 

Nice!

 

This one I received 2 weeks ago. It's also quite close [chronologically] to my username of Gallienus. It's an AE42 (bronze, 42 mm dia) Roman Provincial medallion of Claudius II issued between 268 - 270 AD. I got it from Goldberg's but it appeared in Gorney about a year ago but I missed it then. The owner resold less than a year later for some reason. Actually Claudius II killed Gallienus but being low on cash I did not bid on the silver medallion of Gallienus recently in Gorney.

I've become quite interested in the Military Crisis Era of the Roman Empire during the 3rd century AD and this one helps my collection of mostly bronzes during that era. This is also my 1st post so I hope it works.

 

Works fine and thats a beautiful coin. It deserves it's own thread. We need more ancient talk while some of us save your $ for new purchases

Interesting you like the military crisis, most go for earlier rome.

 

It worked just fine! You seem quite adept and in-depth as well! Welcome aboard and thanks for sharing your interesting collection!

Best Regards, :hail:

George

 

Man, what a beautiful piece. Just spectacular.

 

Hi & Thanks very much for your message. The Claudius II is quite nice in person and apparently quite rare: I've been helped by Dane aka "Helvetica" at Wildwinds for some of it's attribution as I don't read Greek. 20 years ago I bought another spectacular medallion from Gorney of Caracalla. It's an AE 45 (large size) in full EXF, struck in 210 or 211 AD. However Caracalla is The Most Common medallion producer and medallions of him, while desirable in high grade are, not critically rare. Thus when I saw this one, issued during the latter 3rd century I thought to research it a bit and bid on it. It appeared earlier in Goldberg's but didn't sell. Also for some reason, while gold is out of the world, and silvers are very expensive, bronze Roman coins currently seem to be in the doghouse.

I do also like early Roman as well as late but often am badly outbid on early stuff as it's very expensive. I bid over the estimate on a Julius Caesar but it ended up going for exactly 10x my already high bid. I did get a very common but apparently high grade CAST Aes Grave from a foreign auction (Artemide Aste, Italy) earlier this year. This is quite a large coin, weighing 258 g according to my postage scale. I have a few other earlier Roman pieces but they were acquired long ago.

 

I am a collector on a budget so just the coins you have posted are way out of my reach. Another beautiful addition.

Is Gallienus your favorite emperor cause of your username? He's mine.

 

Actually I've liked Gallienus for several years. I think he got a raw deal in the few [one?] history that survived from that era. He was the son of Valerian [previous Emperor] and fought many battles to keep the empire together as many regions sought their independence. This was the era of the Separatist (or Rebel) Gallic and Palymerian Empires -- a theme picked up in the Star Wars series.

I've bid on coins of him but always always get outbid. Finally I went thru a box of some cheap junk coins I bought in the 70's and found a nearly mint state antoninianus of him.

I too am on a budget. I'm just an engineer and used to collect US but I've found it very expensive in terms of quality vs price. Thus I moved to foreign and settled down to coins of the early Latin American Republics and Roman & Greek. I believe it's good to find areas to specialize in. I was always interested in foreign, even when I collected US but I basically began heavily buying foreign after finishing graduate school in 1988.

 

Just received this today, Valentinian I copper.

 

Nice looking old coin

It is a nice looking old coin & I'm sure the identification is correct. However, I cannot read the legend. Do you know what the letters are in the legend? Also, do you know in what years it was issued? The portrait looks similar to a Constantine and a Constantinus that are in my collection.

 

I do not know that info, but maybe someone on the ancients thread will chime in.

 

Very interesting coin. As you know Valerian was the father of Gallienus and I've been seeking to buy a Valerian for at least 4-5 years now.

Note that I'm not really an expert on ancient attributations but will take a stab at it.
I do not believe this coin is of Valerian (reigned 253-260 AD) but rather of Constantine (307 -337) or of that era. If you look at Wildwinds:
http://wildwinds.com/coins/ric/valerian_I/i.html

you'll see that his portrait is quite different. At this point in time Roman Imperial portraits often reflected what the guy actually looked like. An exception is the Provincial coinage which is sometimes quite rare but this is not a Provincial piece. The front of the legend is difficult to read but appears to be DN. DN= Dominum Noster or Our Lord which was not used until times near Constantine. This led me immediately to believe the coin was later.

Also most of Valerian's coins are antonianii which have the radiate (spiked) crown. At that point in time regular denominations were used e.g. antoninianus, sestersius, dupondius, as, etc. In Constantine's time coins are more likely to be just classed as coppers of very small size AE4, small size AE3, etc.

Finally looking up Constantine on Wildwinds you see one example of his obv legend as:
FL VALER CONSTANTINVS P F AVG
So apparently Constantine used the legend with "VAL" preceeding the rest of this name. This may be why the seller attributed it as Valerian.

 

You read the original post wrong, he has it as Valentinian I

 

Actually it could be Valerian: the portrait w/ the wreath appears the same and the legends are consistant with Valentinian.

Correction I meant Valentinian, I keep reading Valerian when I should be writing Valentinian -sorry

 

Cant be. I enjoy valerian coinage and that is Valentinian I, over 100 year difference.

 

This one was minted 351-354 AD in present day Turkey. Fallen horseman