Yeah, that Titus Vesp is a real beauty. But with Titus nose and having never met a meal that he didn't like, I'm having a hard time deciding which is him and which is the elephant! (Ba dum tssss) Also, some really nice detail on that Gordian iii obverse.
I can only quote @Nathan401 ! Wow!! We would never think of burying our ancient coin collections in the ground, yet that's exactly where they've been for the past 2000 years.
wow quality is still possible, after so many year gone, probably found in grasslands(without plowing)
in fact, OKIDOKI, he find denarii in a very deep plow, around 15 inches deep..l noticed, that the worst quality coins are from the forest, especially bronze coins, not silver..no idea why..maybe acid from leaves..
galba68. Wonderful, unearthed, collection, from your friend. Somewhat disappointing, that you say nothing about the story, where, and how were the coins found, what can you share about each coin ? Even though some matters can be seen (some coins are Byzantine), please don't keep us guessing !!!
hi bert..my friend found it in different locations, and l should really have a big post to explain story behind every coin..but, l will try next time about my coins..
Thanks, galba 68. About locations, I wasn't asking for exact pinpointing. But were they all found in U.S.A., and if so, near a river or forest etc.? And was the area(s) known for any historical reasons etc. ? It would be interesting to have more such details, without encouraging an army of metal detectorists to mass-invade !
Think about it a minute...can you come up with ANY American location to find ancient Roman coins. He is in Italy and has posted many of his amazing finds. I am still wondering what the Italian government position on finds is.
I don't think so, but somewhere else in Europe. I'll let @galba68 say where he is located if he chooses.
Many years ago, I was told that there has been more damage to coins in the last hundred years than in the 2000 before it. The reason is the increasing use of chemical fertilizers. I suspect that this is consistent with the theory that forest leaves would cause more damage but we have to remember that what is a forest today may have been an open field a century/millennium ago. In the US, we sometimes visit Civil War battlefields that are heavily treed. The trees are less than 100 years old and the battle was earlier. My neighborhood was clear cut in the 1920's but today has 75-100 foot trees the largest of which were then twigs and regrowth from stumps. I have to wonder what is the greatest depth from which an ancient coin has been found. Today we hear of terrible mudslides burying neighborhoods several feet deep. I suspect there have been similar actions for the entire time coins were in use.
As a former detectorist, I used to muse on things like this a lot. Apparently the thing about leaves is that their decomposition produces acidic soil? I think I read somewhere that this is worse with coniferous forests than deciduous ones? Hard for me to say from firsthand experience, though. I've found and seen found some pretty pristine old coins from forest floors, and heavily corroded ones from treeless places, including some where chemical fertilizers probably weren't an issue. I think soil conditions vary so widely that it's like "microclimates". I've known the soil on one side of a half-acre lot to be harsh and corrosive while some really well preserved coins have come up from the other half of the same relatively small lot. It's like that with ground depth, too. I've found coins and buttons from the 1820s at grassroots level (some of the buttons with original thread in them!), and modern Memorial cents ten inches down. You never can tell. My one Roman coin find was on the surface. (Of course it wasn't dropped by a Roman, since it was found on a colonial site in Georgia, USA.)
Kentucky challenged us to come up with ANY American location to find ancient Roman coins. Challenge accepted. Some examples - Venezuala, Maine, Oklahoma, a shipwreck of Oak Island at Nova Scotia, Texas, Alabama, Illinois etc. Convinced ???
Well, ancient coins can be found anywhere somebody dropped one, in the USA or elsewhere. But if you want ancient coins in an original, ancient archaeological context, you pretty much have to be somewhere on the Eurasian or African continents. I'm reasonably confident that the Roman coin I found here in Georgia spent 150-250 years in the ground, but I'm not surmising that there were Roman legions here or anything. I'll leave that sort of speculative nonsense to the "History" Channel. Speaking of speculative, but perhaps not complete nonsense... I still haven't rewritten my Mysterious Ming Medallion story, about one of my most famous finds. I promised a friend I would do that and submit the article to The Numismatist. Still need to do that. In the meantime, I will let Dr. Lee tell the story of the artifact, if not the details of how I found it. Controversial revisionist historian Gavin Menzies also wrote about it in his book Who Discovered America? and mentioned me and the find several times. Of course, the Ming Dynasty is not quite ancient. More medieval. And this was not a coin.