The Victoriatus - A long awaited coin

I'm sure anyone who reads my posts has seen my Quadrigatus by now. It's my 2nd favorite coin in my collection.

Ever since I got my Quadrigatus I have had an eye out for a nice example of it's little brother..



The "Victoriatus":




Anonymous. Ca. 211-208 BC. AR victoriatus (17mm, 3.32 gm, 9h). NGC Choice MS 5/5 - 5/5, Fine Style. Apulia, Q series. Laureate head of Jupiter right / Victory standing right, crowning trophy; Q between, ROMA in exergue. Crawford 102/1. Sydenham 115.


Per Wikipedia:

"The coin originally weighed about 3.4 grams (3 scruples), meaning that it was half the value of the quadrigatus, a coin weighing 6 scruples that was by this time no longer produced. The Victoriatus was made of a more debased silver
than the denarius, which was introduced at about the same time. Hoard evidence indicates that the coin circulated in southern Italy and later Gaul, indicating that the coin was intended as a replacement for the drachma or half-nomos
instead of as part of the normal Roman coin system. When first issued the Victoriatus had a value of about 3/4 of a denarius, however when the Quinarius was reintroduced in 101 BC with a similar type, it was valued at 1/2 a denarius.
This indicates that Victoriati that were still in circulation at this time were worn and considered to be worth only half a denarius. The reintroduced Quinarius was produced mainly for Cisalpine Gaul, where the Victoriatus
and imitations were popular. The reintroduced Quinarius may have continued to be called a Victoriatus, although there is no written evidence of this."

I must have passed on at least 40-50 of them for various reasons. I got sidetracked by some denarii (looking at you Vespasian and Domitian)
but one of these was definitely on my high priority list.

Well I recently managed to get one and figured I would share it with you guys .

It's also my first "Fine Style" coin!

One thing I find interesting (and hilarious) is that the Roman Republic was WAY better at making circular coins.

During the Roman Empire denarii were very rarely perfect circles. But this Victoriatus was made centuries earlier and is (almost) a perfect circle.

Interestingly it just so happens that even though my coins aren't exactly their exact ideal weight my Victoriatus still weighs exactly 1/2 of what my Quadrigatus weighs xD.

My Quadrigatus is 6.64 grams and my Victoriatus is 3.32 grams.



Although the crack on the edge of the Victoriatus (6 o clock on the obverse) takes away some eye appeal I am glad that at least it didn't affect the design of the obverse or the reverse.

Some of the Victoriatuses (Victoriati?) I've seen have the head way down at the bottom or half the reverse at the edge and the other half missing.

If anyone is curious it's because it's an "as minted" defect so that's how it still got the 5/5 surface grade.

But at least my Quadrigatus has some battle scars too lol!

 

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So nice, but even nicer if you could hold them in your hand.

 

Well fortunately if I ever decide to it would be easy to crack open the slab .

But with coins like this I think holding in the hand is a bad idea just because of the Ch MS condition. All it would take is a scratch or a smudge and it could lose a lot of value.

For lower condition coins though I agree it's pretty cool to hold them in one's hands.

 

Oh yeah and feel free to share your Victoriatus if you have 'em!

 

Congrats - very nice coin.

What you really need is the half quadrigatus, a scarcer beast than the quadrigatus; the victoriatus is a later coin. There was a double victoriatus, a very rare coin, and a half victoriatus, which I don't have either.

I've only one drachm/half quadrigatus - Cr. 28/4:



I've got 24 victoriati - this is my example of Cr. 102/1:



And a few more random ones...

Cr. 98A/1:


Cr. 95/1A:


Cr. 71/1A:




ATB,
Aidan.

 

Nice ones Aidan!

I had no idea they made a half victoriatus and a double victoriatus.

Wait isn’t a double victoriatus just a Quadrigatus?

 

No - the double victoriatus was the same design as the victoriatus, but double the weight. There was only one issue - Cr. 90/1 - and extremely rare.

There's one in Paris, linked to by CRRO:

http://numismatics.org/crro/id/rrc-90.1

The half quadrigatus - the pic above should work now - has the quadriga in the opposite direction as on the quadrigatus and is half the weight.

ATB,
Aidan.

 

Oh wow that's crazy.

Man it must have been CONFUSING doing business back then with so many different types of coins.

 

Oh yeah hey Aidan do you happen to know how many “asses” these coins were worth?

I’ve seen these 60 asses gold coins from around the same time period.



They weigh almost exactly the same as a silver victoriatus so I’m wondering if the ratio of gold to silver was 12 to 1 if that means a victoriatus was worth 5 asses and a Quadrigatus was worth 10?

That would make a Quadrigatus equal to a Republican denarius which would make sense since the Quadrigatus weighed 2 grams more but was made of a more debased silver than the purer denarius.

 

I believe the victoriatus was probably worth 3/4 of a denarius, so 7.5 asses. [Edit - it's far too late here - they weighed about 3/4 of s denarius but had less silver, so they were probably worth less than 7.5 asses] Later on, the victoriatus design is used on quinarii, half a denarius, which by then was 16 asses - it may have made sense that worn, lower grade silver victoriati were passing for half the value of an unworn denarius and so replaced by new quinarius issues.

Harl calls the earlier quadrigati denarii, but most writers don't refer to coins before the 4.5g denarius with Roma and the Dioscuri of ~212/211BC as denarii.

Anyway, the gold to silver ratio at around 211BC was about 8 to 1 in Rome, based on the 60 asses coins weighing around 3.3g and the denarii about 4.5g.

Harl says this deliberately undervalued the gold and the gold coins were mostly melted later.

Later issues changed this ratio to 12 to 1 you mention - Caesar's aurei are around 8g of gold (40 to a Roman pound) and are worth 25 denarii, which weighed around 4g of silver (84 to a Roman pound). That ratio holds for the rest of the Roman period, as far as I know!

ATB,
Aidan.

 

Thanks for clarifying!

It's difficult finding information about coins during the Roman Republic. Most of the historians lived during the Roman Empire so they wrote about Roman Empire currency instead of Republican currency.

 

Congratulations on the Victoriatus. I was fortunate to pick up a few nice examples recently and hopefully will seller the lesser graded ones to reduce my base cost for the 'Fine Style' examples:












Apologies for messing up the earlier post.

 

Nice ones!!

I noticed that your middle coin has the same certification number as mine. They were just listed as seperate entries so the last 3 numbers are different.

That means they were both submitted from the same submitter.

Just speculating here but I think our coins came from some hoard of brand new victoriatii. That's pretty cool!

 

Yes and it would seem several hundred hoarded by some fat Roman Senator

 

Hmmm idk about that. Remember these coins are from the time of the Roman Republic when luxury and decadence were frowned upon.

It wasn’t until the time of Julius Caesar when that started to change.

 

True.....One set of rules for the plebs but another for the elite

 

Actually in the very early days of Rome the elite were ashamed to indulge in luxuries and refrained from them whenever possible because it was seen as "feminine" and "un-Roman".

 

I'm almost certain that this attitude applied more to items of vanity e.g. gold ornaments or accessories for men, silks, fine cotton, bejeweled swords etc. But senators were mainly from elite (read RICH) families. The types of Brutus or Marcus Crassus didn't become ultra rich overnight. They were rich in the days of the Roman Republic.

They all had large land holdings, luxurious villas and holiday homes and countless slaves. Adultery was punishable by death and yet it was commonplace amongst the elite. Even keeping the missus happy would cost a pretty packet.

I always feel that such large hoards of mint state coins either came from a military payroll that got 'lost' or some rather wealthy individual who hid some money (probably from the missus) in case of hard times. Traders and soldiers would generally hoard more circulated coins and different denominations.

 

Well considering they were most popular in Gaul I like to imagine they belonged to some butter eating barbarian. xD