i'm looking at a lvlia Mamaea silver denarius that weights 2.31 gms. is this acceptable? not too much wear on it, but that seems a little light. what's your thoughts peeps?
I own three denarii of hers. One weighs 3.3g, the second at 2.9g while the other weighs in at 2.5g. A significant range.
Sounds good. Weights on those coins was all over the place. I have a Julia Maesa that is around 1.3g, and another member here has one that is 0.9g (I think). Coin weighs for Severans are all over the place. I think during this time the mint got a pound of silver and calculated how many coins they needed to produce from that batch, and then made the individual coins without weighing them. As long as they got x coins from the pound, that's all that mattered. Here is my underweight Julia Maesa.
Maesa, LOL. Darn autocorrect. Though I wouldn't mind a massage from Rome's meanest granny, just as long as she didn't cut my head off in the process.
I have 8 denarii of Mamaea. Their weights are: 3.39 2.95 2.65 3.23 3.05 3.62 3.27 2.95 The mean is 3.14 gm. So, one might say the average weight of a Julia Mamaea denarius is π !
Here's a fouree of Orbiana (Mamaea's daughter-in-law) weighing 2.45 gm: Fouree denarius; 2.45 gm; 18.7 mm AD 232?? Obv: SALL BARBIA ORBIANA AVG, diademed and draped bust, r. Rev: FECVND AVGVSTAE, Fecunditas seated l., reaching out to child. (This is not an official reverse type of Orbiana; rather, it appears to be the reverse of a denarius of Julia Mamaea, RIC 332, issued in AD 232).
Weight is not nearly as important overall as many have come to believe. While we do not know specifically the practice, it has been put forward by many that the mint considered one of two concepts: 1 pound of bullion = xxx specific coins. Second, 1 pound of bullion is struck into an average number of coins. I would expect the practice would be that the mint produce a specific minimum number of coins, any more than that was likely to be extra profit. Somewhere around here I have a Commodus denarius under 2 grams. I'll see if I can find it and post a picture.
Can you post a good pic? I think the coin is ok, but wonder if it is a fouree. If you are not into statistics, skip the rest of this post. I think the coin is a bit on the light side. I did a quick search for Julia Mamaea Denarius on acsearch.info and had 1400 matches. The first 20 were similar numbers to @Roman Collector . RC's coins average = 3.14 g with 0 examples that weighed below your coin St Dev = 0.30 g bottom of a 3 sigma range = 2.23 this data would say it is at the bottom end of the confidence curve acsearch average = 3.02, but there were 2 examples that weighed below your coin St Dev = 0.40 your coin is 2 sigma below the average, the bottom of a 3 sigma range = 1.83 or you have a 5% chance of being outside the normal distribution for this data. I do this math when looking at Roman Republican coins that are either heavy or light. If I can find other examples of similar weight and the picture looks good, I say the coin should be ok. But... I look for places the plating of a fouree cracked. If you like the coin and the price is right, buy it. For the normal distribution, the values less than one standard deviation away from the mean account for68.27% of the set; while two standard deviations from the mean account for 95.45%; and three standard deviations account for 99.73%.
CoinArchivesPro list a number of very light Julia Mamaea denarii - these are some examples of RIC 332 types: (Most were under 3.2 g, the heaviest one was 6 g.! Numismatik Naumann auction 111, Lot 878, December 2021 = 20 mm, 2.14 g. Numismatica Ibercoin Auction 41, Lot 2165, October 2020 = 18 mm, 2.17g Roma Numismatics E-Live Auction 1, Lot 745, July 2018 = 19 mm, 2.09 g Roma... same auction, Lot 746 = 20 mm, 2.22 g, Áureo & Calicó - Auction 270, Lot 263, Sept. 2015 = 2.20 g. Áureo & Calicó - Auction 258, Lot 3337, March 2014 = 2.20 g.
