Hello, I have bought this Denarius of Marcus Aurelius. I tried to find it, but did not suceed. I found coins which looks similar, but all of them have ANTONINVS divided to both sides of head. AN+TONINVS or ANT+ONINVS or ANTO+NINVS. This one has full word on the right side and G in AVG reaches the head. I do not know if it is some rare variant or copy. I think that you have more experience than me, so if you know, please help me with this. Thank you guys.
Do I detect what looks like "reeding" on this coin from about 10'oclock>. I don't think that could be serrating marks and I know of no ancients that employed reeding their coins.
I have not studied this and do not have this type but mine have words broken at legends. Can you show many coins matching yours with breaks in mid-word?
Versions of the same coin with different inscription breaks are not uncommon. RIC usually lumps them all together as the same coin. In some volumes they will note the different breaks in a footnote. In other volumes they don't even bother to mention them.
In the Antonine period, legend breaks appear to have no significance beyond "the die engraver ran out of room."
When I started down the slippery slope of Flavian denarii legend break variants I knew I needed help. Perhaps three other people in the world would've noticed or cared.
I face the same thing in some of my specialties and have a mixed feeling on the matter. I care about letter spacings if I believe or even suspect that the differences in spacing are clues to some intentional 'code' used by the mint but do not when I believe the spacing difference is nothing more than a random variation or a matter of running out of space and poor planning. In most cases I have n certainly on the status of the difference so I don't go out of my way to buy the spacings. There are exceptions. I have seen thousands of denarii with obverse legend IVLIADO-----MNAAVG and three IVLIADOM-----NAAVG of which the (by far!!!) worst is in my collection. I have no reason to believe this means anything but I still want a better one.
That's just the circular beaded border that surrounds the obverse design. It happens to run off the edge of the coin there, and so looks like "reeding". But it is on the face of the coin. Just near the edge, rather than on the edge itself, if that makes any sense. Handsome coin. I like the contrasting grey toning.