Both of the lesser silver coins I found at the show fall into the category of trying to complete a set that I 'sort of' collect. Neither were great priorities; neither are great coins; neither will be in high demand whenever my coins reenter the market someday. My main interest for many years has been Eastern mint coins of Septimius Severus. This is an Eastern mint denarius of Elagabalus. Usually the mint is called 'Antioch' but I really do not know how certain that city ID really is. There are not nearly as many Eastern coin types of Elagabalus and not nearly as many collectors interested in them. My collection is not up to ten types yet. There are at least a couple style variations which I could see someone deciding represent different mints but, for now, all are 'Antioch'. This one is the most different from Rome mint style and is the obverse legend shared with Caracalla which led to my writing a page to help people who have trouble separating coins of the two emperors: http://www.forumancientcoins.com/dougsmith/car-elag.html I pulled this one from a bag of about 300 denarii the seller said was purchased from a metal detectorist group and most had the look of being individual field finds (most worse than this one). He will be selling those coins for a long time since the market for low grade, common denarii is not strong. The group included only three of four coins in better shape than this one. I enjoy the reverse scene showing Elagabalus dropping a small pebble (of incense) onto a flame that reaches over to receive it since it appears that his hand really is not straight over the altar. The second silver is also quite toned and not high quality but it is a type recently discussed here as not being in my collection so I bought this cheap example. This coin is #88 in Harlan Berk's 100 Greatest Ancient Coins and celebrates the 1000th anniversary of the founding of Rome. When we discussed this subject, I substituted another from the Saeculares series but now I own one of these boring pillars. I am always amazed at the inability of the die cutter to engrave COS III on the pillar and make it look like it really belonged there rather than hanging over the edge. The coin came from a different dealer who provided no information but it has enough tone that I wonder if it was from an older collection or is another field find that was not fully cleaned (as seems to be the usual practice for metal detectorist coins). That is all of my silver from the show. Bronzes will follow.
Now you are going to make me keep my eyes open for Eastern mint coins. These are wonderful examples IMHO.
I gotta say, I'm just lovin' those photos you've posted of these silver coins. You probably have addressed this here before (and if so, please direct me to the post), but I can see your camera set up in your icon photo. What's your set up? How do you do that black background? It really sets off those coins.
Number 2. Is one I definitely want, no question. Number 1 is a beautiful coin in your photo it looks like Elagabalus has his tongue in his cheek.
http://www.forumancientcoins.com/dougsmith/coinphoto2011ez3.html The above shows the background technique. Over time, I have posted way too many pages on coin photography but I keep changing my mind. I now have returned to twist fluorescent bulbs making page four of my latest series obsolete but I have not rewritten the whole of the photo pages to cover that change. My latest supports are slightly changed also but the one here works at least as well. I experiment constantly. This photo fails to show the coin is resting on a dowel rod.
