Retrograde Constantine I

I have 2 of these that were mixed in with a lot of uncleaned. They were very difficult to bring to ID because the legends and mint marks were backwards and they were poorly crafted. Since they are not official I have no way to designate attributions. I have decided that they were trying to be Constantine I, Siscia Mint, BSIS Mint Mark, Victoriae Laetae. Note that the mint mark is engraved backwards. This leads me to believe it to be copied from BSIS.

I am posting one for comments. How would a person classify this coin?

 

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Yes, it's copying Siscia. These defy classification since they are not struck by an official mint. I have several hundred of them, with only a few die matches. Sometimes I label them like--

Constantine I
circa A.D. 318-19
20x19mm 3.0gm
[IMP CONSTANTINVS P F AVG] -- laureate helmet and cuirassed bust right.
[VICTORIAE LAETAE PRINC PERP] -- two Victories stg., facing one another, together holding shield/wreath inscribed [VOT PR]
in ex. [????]
cf. RIC VII Siscia 53 unofficial issue

In the brackets, put whatever, letters if you have them or question marks if you are uncertain [??????]. I say compare to Siscia 53, because that is close enough to the prototype. It might be copying another issue, since the obverse legend is not clear, but it is a D6 bust, so it's close enough.

usually I just label them-- Siscia VLPP barb #??? with measurements.

my page with 144 of these currently listed--

http://www.constantinethegreatcoins.com/barb2/

I wouldn't sweat the legend though, as these are often gibberish, sometimes not even letters, Below is a coin that I have described as "Coin #17 18mm 2.6gm" with no letters in the legends (or lots of I's).

 

Thanks @Victor_Clark I like the method you apply to these.

 

These are my favorite type of unofficial coins. I like to think of them as "impressionist" style.

Bunch of squiggles around the edge: ✔

Slightly more varied squiggles on the reverse to make it look legit: ✔

 

I love these VLPP barbs. I only have a couple, but they are very endearing and beautiful in their own right.
Like @Heliodromus said, they are very impressionistic.
I like to think that some of these were engraved by highly skilled local artists in their own style.
Some barbs attempt (poorly) to copy official styles - these are little more than grunt labor that any slave could perform.

However, there are those that were obviously modeled on an official prototype, but make no attempt to copy them. In other words, these are original creations by skilled artists who incorporated their own local art styles.

This is my favorite. The letters on the obverse make no attempt to emulate latin letters at all. You can see Some "x" letters, some "c" and some "squiggle."
The reverse is just "IIII"

However, the portrait is obviously of a very fine style, a little basic compared to Roman art, but very attractive and shows an excellent command of the human figure.

The reverse is very abstract. The two victories are reduced to line drawings, with wings that are little more than a row of dots.
My favorite feature is the "VOT XX" shield. The celator made no effort to even attempt the letters - instead, he aligned four strokes in a vaguely squarish-circlish shape.
This implies lettering without directly portraying it.

 

This particular reverse type was widely imitated. I don't know why these are so common compared to, say, campgate or two-soldier reverses.

Here's my example:

Unknown mint, 4th century A.D.
Barbarous imitation of Constantine the Great, VICTORIAE LAETAE PRINC PERP reverse type.
Obv: (CONSTANTIN-VS AVG) - Bust, left, in high-crested helmet, spear over right shoulder, shield over left.
Rev: Gibberish - Two Victories, facing each other, holding inscribed shield over altar.
•SIS in exergue.
17 mm, 2.1 g.

And its inspiration:

Siscia mint, A.D. 319-320
RIC 95, variant
Obv: IMP CONSTANT-INVS AVG
Rev: VICT[dot] LAETAE PRINC PERP - Two Victories, facing each other, holding shield inscribed VOT/PR over altar
ΓSIS✳ in exergue; S in altar.
20 x 18 mm, 3.2 g.

Note: This coin has the obverse inscription of RIC 101, albeit with an unrecorded inscription break, and the mint mark of RIC 95. RIC 101 is part of a group of coins labeled "Irregular." One possible explanation is that these "irregular" coins are part of the same series as RIC 93 - 99.

 

Pierre Bastien deals with the various waves of 4th century imitations in his seminal study 'Imitations of Roman Bronze Coins, A.D. 318-363' in Museum Notes 30, American Numismatic Society, 1985, pp. 143-177. As summarized by Bastien, "Indeed, each new series of imitations follows a monetary reform which may have caused a withdrawal of the previous coinage and a reduction in mint productivity due to reorganization". For our period specifically, Bastien cites the introduction in 318 of "a new nummus" and "the demonetization of the folles". While other waves of imitation tended to be centered in Gaul and Britain, the VLPP coinage seems to have been much copied in the Balkans. Cold War politics unfortunately hindered their study in the second half of the last century. For those interested in further reading, I believe Museum Notes 30 (as well as most ANS publications) can be freely accessed at hathitrust.org.

 

In this case, in 318 AD, I think it was the newly increased silver content of the coins that triggered widespread counterfeiting. At other times it may also have been profit potential that lured counterfeiters, but due to reduced weight standards meaning more profit per pound of bronze.

The nummus had been introduced by Diocletian with an approximate 5% silver content, but by the time of Constantine had already been reduced to something more like 1-2%. The VLPP, and associated types introduced at the same time, must have essentially been a new denomination since it had a silver content increased back to the 4-5% range, and must have had a corresponding increase in face value from the preceding 1-2% silver coinage. This increased face value was apparently enough to make base-metal counterfeits profitable.

It's interesting to note that the VLPP design, as well as the emperor-on-eagle design used for Licinius (and a quadriga type for Daia), had initially been introduced at Trier in 313 AD ("Trier billion") with a 20% silver content, but evidentially never caught on as a new denomination. Constantine then reintroduced these designs (minus the Daia type), now with a reduced 4-5% silver content, in 318 AD. Perhaps he just liked the designs, or perhaps he hoped acceptance of the new coinage's face value would be boosted by association with the earlier types.

It's also interesting to note that Diocletian's original 5% silver nummus, unlike the 5% silver VLPP, was rarely counterfeited. Presumably at least part of the reason was that the material costs to make the earlier heavier coins, given their value at the time, hadn't looked as attractive to the counterfeiter as the profit equation for the VLPPs.

 

While I am wrong at least half of the time on yes/no questions, I do not believe these coins are 'counterfeits' made to fool people but more on the order of the US hard Times and Civil War coins made to fill a need caused by some political/economic 'situation'. I seems unlikely that they will ever be understood even half as well as the official coins of their era but they do hold interest and, I believe, are a significant part of the economy in the regions where they have been found.

 

I agree with Doug. I think most of these VLPPs were not intended to circulate within the Empire. I think it's more likely that these coins were made to fill a void outside and on the fringes of it. It's also likely that they were made over a much longer period than the official ones. That is, since these were available in the outlying areas, the problem of facilitating local trade was solved and there was no pressing need to keep the reverses up to date and synced with the official issues. Keep in mind that these areas were still practicing a largely barter economy, and these imitations filled sort of a niche need, rather than being the basis of economic activity.

 

The comparison to Hard Times and Civil War tokens is appropriate. The imitation George III halfpence in Britain are perhaps an even better analogy. Popular notions that these imitations circulated primarily outside the empire or for far longer than their prototypes are simply contrary to the evidence, however. I highly recommend Bastien's article as a starting point which will suggest additional reading. The author offers far better detail and documentation than can be done here.

 

If they were simply counterfeit the designs would not likely have degenerated as much as they did - meaning that they were either produced for a very long period of time, or they were used on fringes, or both.

 

Consider the so-called 'barbarous radiates', many of which are extremely crude. Once upon a time, they were thought to represent a British 'dark ages' coinage. Philip Hill even declared them to be the coins of "Hengist and Horst with their Jutes"! Then at the Verulamium Theater site in the UK, a hoard of tiny, crude radiate minimi was found in a sealed archaeological context, buried below a pediment known to have been laid before AD 300. Based on the find, Hill publicly recanted and the idea that most late-3rd and 4th century imitations are contemporary with their prototypes has borne out in hoard finds across the continent. Yes, some VLPP imitations are very crude. Others are very good and according to Bastien, have sometimes been under-counted in hoards because of their quality.

There is indeed something to be said for the fact that waves of imitation tend to be centered in the provinces. Not only was the coinage supply more difficult to maintain in far-flung regions amid the cycle of repeated reform and demonetization, but the long arm of the law in times of trouble was not always long enough. The persistence of the problem seems not to have been so much a matter of official tolerance but rather the inability of the central authorities to do much about it.

 

Thanks - yes it is. Search for "museum notes", then scroll down to select volume 30. You can either save the entire volume, or just select pages to save (article + plates). You can use shift-click to select page ranges (article) and ctrl-click to add pages (plates).

Alternatively for anything on JSTOR.org (which this also is) with a free account you can view but not download... So what I do is right click to save all the page images (as .gif) and any plates (as .jpg), then use imagetopdf.com to merge them back into a PDF ! There's a 20-page limit, but if needed create multiple PDF sections then merge those using sodapdf.com. You want to use consequetive filenames for the pages (p143.gif, p144.gif, etc) so they get combined in the right order.

I just did it both ways (JSTOR first, before I saw your hathitrust.com suggestion).

 

I love this topic so much. I wonder if we'll every know the answer. Some coins were crude as crude can be, while others are very fine in style and are actually larger than official versions, such as this Constans imitation which is a solid 2-3 mm larger than contemporary majorinae(?)

 

While I thoroughly enjoy a cool retrograde, I've none of Con-stain-tine (I just thought that up) nor his kin.
I do have a pretty rad retrograde Pyrrhus of Epirus MSC. Gnik. King in reverse:


And, as our man @dougsmit (who is probably right closer to 97.2% of the time) points out as an apt modern parallel, here are a few of the Hard times tokens (funny enough, the only American coin type I asked about last time I visited my LCS back in SLC):

 

I have the Bastien article on my page here--

http://www.constantinethegreatcoins.com/articles/

no memberships required.

 

Here is my Retrograde Reverse, Sarmatia Devicta type.

 

I just finished reading Bastien's "Imitations of Roman Bronze Coins, AD 318-363", linked above, and was pretty disappointed. In particular, if you're looking for any reasoned discussion of *why* counterfeits were produced, you won't find it here.

The first 30 pages of the article give an overview of the types and ("epidemic") waves of imitations produced in this period, and notes that each of these waves follows an official coinage reform. It's then only in the last 3-4 pages of the article ("etiology", p.171) that Bastien discusses the cause of these epidemic waves, but even here there is no discussion of alternate theories since his starting point is a flat assertion that it was due to shortages of official coinage.

Bastien supplies a few brief hand-wavy explanations of why there may have been shortages (without bothering to provide any evidence that shortages in fact existed), such as withdrawal of the prior coinage, or a reduction in mint productivity, before finally changing his tune and concluding instead that shortages (still not proved to have actually existed) were deliberate as an inflation fighting measure.

Of course inflation was rampant during this time, and the coinage reforms were all reactions to this, withdrawing older low value coins and replacing them with new high value ones, sometimes with increased silver content to justify having done so. However, an assertion that the Romans were using monetary supply (amount of money in circulation) as an anti-inflationary tool is a bold claim that would need some evidence, which Bastien does not provide.

Oddly, Bastien does not even consider, let alone reject, the rather obvious alternate (or minimally additional) profit motive for counterfeiting, or that the inflation-induced face-value-hiking nature of these reforms would provide the exact incentive for associated counterfeiting. He does note that the majority of Fel Temp counterfeits were the highest value (and highest percentage silver content) Galley type, without any apparent awareness of this undermining his argument of this being coinage of necessity rather than profit driven.

 

For a good discussion on why, check out C. E. King, "Roman Copies" Coin Finds and Coin Use in the Roman World. Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag (1996) : 237-263. Ultimately though, the conclusion isn't black or white, more of a grey answer-- "It is difficult to demonstrate that large-scale outbreaks have a common impetus underlying their production."

Another good read (though confined to Britain) George C. Boon, “Counterfeit Coins in Roman Britain,” Coins and the Archaeologist, London: Seaby (1980) : 102- 188.