Got myself a Domitian

Silver is tough to photograph. Check your white balance correctly, and if you still get some hue in pic, desaturate, desaturate, desaturate.

 

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Thanks all and cool coins!

 

minerva walking left

minerva walking right

need a minerva walking into owl

 

big sweet green domitian VK! i dig it, and would snatch it up for sure.

my only coin form this guy is a denarius...

 

Not to be pedantic (but this hobby invites it!), your first coin is Minerva standing left with thunderbolt and spear, shield behind her. Also, you are missing two other types: Minerva and owl on capital of rostral column, and Minerva standing left with spear.

Don't be like me and collect one of every type from all the issues, it is quite obsessively maddening.

Awesome coins BTW.

 

I know I've posted it like 10,000 times already but since it is a Domitian... (my only other one)

Domitian, Roman Empire (revalued under the Ostrogothic Kingdom)
AE as/42 nummi
Obv: CAESAR AVG F DOMITIAN COS II, laureate head left, countermark XLII (42) in left field
Rev: VICTORIA AVGVST, Victory advancing right, standing on prow, holding wreath and palm branch, S-C across fields
Mint: Rome (struck 73-74 AD; revalued 498-526 AD)
Ref: RIC 677

 

Standing left with statue of victory


advancing right on ship, owl at feet

Advancing right no owl , no ship and fourree so details don't count


It is fine to shoot color correctly but you can fine-adjust tints in postprocessing so you really should have the coin in hand and compare what yo see to what you have on the screen. Unfortunately the tint you see 'in hand' will depend on the light you use since an old fashion incandescent bulb, fluorescents (of several color variations), LED's (also come in several tints), daylight and light bouncing around your pink/blue/orange/purple painted bedroom all will change the definition of white. You can make changes to be accurate as soon as you ecide what is accurate by your definition. Desaturation makes thing seem gray and that may be the correct (lack of) color for many coins. Many is not all. To make it worse, the screens on each of our several computers, tablets or whatever will not all be exactly the same unless we have adjusted them with very specialized monitor balancing software. Most of us say, "Close counts" and don't bother. My Domitians shown here were processed on my of computer with is just a bit cooler (more blue) than my new laptop so they don't look exactly right to me but I might not be 'correcting' if I changed them as much as just making them different. Will any number of you see these tints exactly as I do on your equipment? Now I understand why so many dealers are using black and white photos.

 

Well, from my perspective, in my home office, lit by whatever bulbs are in my lamps and on my computer screen color adjusted from the factory, all your images look fantastic. But that is just me in my simple setting.

 

Pedantic David here again. The second type you post has mistakenly been called "Minerva on prow of ship" or just a "ship" for many years. It's actually a capital of a rostral column decorated with prows. Interestingly enough, the new RIC II notes Oxford has an example of this type (RIC 730) depicting an actual prow instead of the normal columna rostrata. On better preserved specimens two seated figures can be seen on the capitial.

 

Is there an image on-line of this coin?

 

http://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=190317
http://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=2079010

These seem to be common in high grade which explains why they are cheap in my grade.

 

I would like to see the coin depicting the two seated figures on the capital.

 

Thanks Doug. The examples you've linked show the seated figures beautifully.

 

These are seated figures? They sure would have gotten by me.

 

Yes sir, those are the figures. They get by many collectors and dealers simply because of their size and it only takes a small bit of wear to make them hard to see.

 

They got by me too, but looking at mine now I can just about make them out. Thanks for pointing this detail out!

Sellers images; I haven't taken my own yet.

 

You are quite welcome!

The obvious question would be who or what are the two figures? Ian Carradice in Coinage and Finances in the Reign of Domitian simply says "decorated with two figures" and nothing more (p. 21).

Could they be some combination of Jupiter, Victory, or Neptune? What figures are normally depicted on these columns?

 

There's an uncommon type of that. Instead of letters going around it says COS left of minerva and IIII right side of her.
I'd like to have this variant, but there's others with diff obv. and same rev.

 

This is a rare type struck for Domitian as Caesar by Vespasian in 76/77, RIC 920. Interestingly, it is described in the new RIC as Minerva "on prow"!

Domitian as Augustus struck Minerva types with the legend running across field in 87/88. They are rare as well.