Purchased my first two ancient coins

I was given an ancient coin when I was a child but this is the first time I have ever purchased a coin made before the 17th Century.

I bought these two coins before buying the book. I bought these coins simply because I like them. They look to be high grade and the details are very legible. I’m told that this high grade is not uncommon for these particular ancients. They are from a reputable dealer where I do continuous business & returns are cool.

All I really know about the coins is what was written on the holders when I bought them. One was labeled “Constantine I 307-337 AD”.


The other was labeled Constantius II from 337-361

Please let me know more! I don’t know what these are made of, the denomination, or what they might purchase back in the 4th Century.

Very best regards,
Collect89

 

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The diameter of each is about 16.7 mm (0.660").

 

Very nice! and great detail

 

A very good start! You can probably handle IDing these, try this site.

http://www.catbikes.ch/coinstuff/coins-ric.htm

 

Unfortunately, not much is actually known about Roman bronze coins of this period. Among most modern day numismatists, they are known as 'fractional follii' or simply 'bronzes' of AE-X (the 'X' being the size of the coin). No-one seems to know what these coins were known as by contemporary Romans.
It is known however, that this was a very chaotic and unstable time for the Roman Empire, with hyperinflation and civil war a constant scourge. Considering the economic turmoil and the vast quantaties of these coins which still survive to this day, the purchasing power of these coins probably wasn't that great and the situation with the currency was so dire that even the Roman government had been forced to accept goods in kind rather than coins as payment for taxes at one point...

 

Here's another site that focuses specifically on Constantine coins. Its the site I used to identify my much more badly worn ones. Beautiful coins by the way.
http://www.constantinethegreatcoins.com/

 

I dont know much about theses, But there very nice indeed!!

 

Another term is "LRB" which means Late Roman Bronzes.

I saw this term on the Forum website and it took me a while to find out what it meant.
http://www.forumancientcoins.com/board/index.php

 

They are in wonderful condition :thumb: great start to your Roman collection

 

Ancient coins are very cool.

Roman 4th century bronzes are really common, but they're unusual in nice shape like that.

I'm personally partial to denarii -- small silver coins about the size of a dime. There are a lot of nice ones out there, and for the common emperors (generally 3rd century), they're not that expensive.

 

I don't want to spoil the fun of others making you do the ID work yourself and they gave you the right sites to do it so I'll just throw in a couple hints that might help. Weigh the coins. The one with the two victories is lighter and replaced the one with two soldiers and one standard because inflation was making the metal value of the coin greater than the denomination. This period was a series of calling in old coins and replacing them with lower quality ones.

Be careful that you find a match with only one standard between the soldiers. The same design with two standards was slightly earlier and heavier. The mintmark on the first coin reads SMANA. The SM just means sacred money and can be ignored except to mention that not all mints used it. AN means Antioch where the coin was struck. The final A is a Greek numeral for the workshop within the mint. Antioch at times used up to 15 workshops so it is very possible you will find a matching coin with SMANB etc. Very few people care a lot about workshop numbers or try to fill up a set but there are a few people that pay a little extra for rare or uncatalogued numbers. This is not one of them but it is a nice coin.

The other coin belongs to Constantius II who is one letter different from his older brother ConstantiNus II BUT you won't find this type in Constantinus II's name because he died before they started making these. The mintmark is ESIS being exactly backwards from your other coin in that the E is the workshop number (5) and SIS stands for the town of Siscia. Some people get led down a path of confusion by the big dot in the center of this reverse but it means nothing. Certainly there are dots on some coins that separate issues in a meaningful way but this one is a remnant of the compass used to lay out the border and legends. Most dies had such a dot but most got erased by the portrait or the reverse design. Relatively few coins had the middle as blank as this one so we often get the dot unless wear and tear have erased it. The reverse legend shows the standard way of abbreviating plurals by doubling the final (or only) letter We see DD avGG Q NN. AVG is one Emperor so AVGG is two (Constantius II and Constans). DD NN is plural of DN (Dominus Noster = our lord). The Q abbreviates Que a suffix meaning 'and'. The word order has caused different people more into grammar than I to fight over different translations so I'm staying out of that one.

The only worthwhile reason to buy a coin is 'because you like them'. These are likable. The first is a better strike and easier to read so I like it better. I never recommend beginners buy poor condition coins because they are harder to read and ones this nice are not hard to find with a little effort. They may cost a little more but you could have spent the same money on a dozen illegible crusties and had less in my opinion. Certainly there are other opinions but I buy ugly coins when I can't find or afford the same thing in decent looking shape. I hope you will take the trouble to research these two completely and enjoy them so much you decide to add a couple thousand more all selected carefully because you like them. I might suggest a Constans and Constantine II with different reverses and from different mint cities as a good place to start but there are a million options. Enjoy.

 

Thanks everyone.

Thanks for everyone’s input! Thanks for letting me struggle a little & have fun.

I reviewed the Website http://www.constantinethegreatcoins.com/ and learned a lot about Constantine. I learned a lot about his rise to power & family etc. (It was cool to think how the world might be quite different today if Constantine had lost his pivotal battle against Maxentius and had his head carried around on a pike by Maxentius’ soldiers). I learned a lot about the different obverses, reverses legends, dots and and and and. However, I did not find my particular two coins pictured on the first Website. I found what appears to be one of my exact coins in written description at http://www.forumancientcoins.com/. I guess I need to ask you guys which simple book(s) you recommend for me to better understand and look-up these old pieces of metal.

Very best regards,
collect89

 

Yes, good start.

The Constantine I has a wonderfull portrait !

Q

 

You ask two questions. To 'look up' the simple book is Van Meter which I review in the book section of my website (very bottom of page):
http://dougsmith.ancients.info/

To understand, I am not nearly as positive on any simple book. There are decent books including Wayne Sayles' series of six but that is a lot of books. I'd start with his volume three on Rome which, oddly enough, is the one I reviewed on the same page.

Rather than give the link to my book review page, I gave the main page which means you will have to scroll all the way down to the bottom to find the book link. If you should happen to pass anything along the way while scrolling down, you won't hurt my feelings if you click and read one or a hundred of them.

I hope others will suggest better books but most of the books I considered best for 'understanding' rather than just 'looking up' are either out of print, expensive or both. There are other very good sites on the Internet so I'd suggest starting with the pages given in response to your first question and look for the links offered by those sites. I do like books (probably explains why I have so many) but it is hard to recommend one that will really do what I believe you would benefit from most. After some basic training on websites and participating on lists like this one, you will be better prepared to select books that fit your interests.

 

I like Wayne Sayles' books

 

I am a beginner ancient "accumulator/collector", and I LOVE Mr. Smith's site!!! My only complaint with it is that he needs to add about 30+ pages of Late Roman Bronze info, particularly more campgate & Huts.:thumb:

 

Thanks for the kind words. In the time I have been 'in' this hobby, the emphasis has really changed. Once, late Roman bronzes were hardly considered collectable by many people I knew. High enders gathered Greek silver (sometimes by die identities) and cheapskates like me collected denarii (Septimius Severus if you were really low class). My site is heavily overstrength on cheap coins. There may be a gold coin there but many of you would never find it unless very lucky (and it doesn't belong to me either). The reason my site has what it has on late Roman is my friendship with Victor Failmezger that led to my taking pictures for his book on Late Roman Bronzes that got me interested enough to buy a few of them. Today there are great sites on late Roman. I'm a little sorry that mine is not one of them but what I know about the coins is mostly covered on the 20 some pages I do have.

When I started my site, my objective was to encourage the study of and have fun with ancient coins. Nothing makes me happier than to visit a site that was posted by someone who got the idea to do it from visiting my pages. When you write those 30+ pages on LRB, please send me the link so I can learn from them. I support free information exchange in both directions.

 

Hey, I never said I was going to write them, I just said I wanted to read them!!:kewl:
Besides, I just wanted to say you have a VERY informative site, and one of the things I (and I bet a LOT of others) like about it is you focus on inexpensive ancients ($10-$100) that ordinary folks can buy. I would LOVE to have a collection of roman & Byzantine gold, but it just ain't gonna happen with 3 kids!! The mid 4th century LRBs & earlier ants/denarii offer a lot of neat (yeah I'm still at the new stage where I use the word "Neat" to describe a lot of my coins) designs that are nearly 1700 years old for not a lot of money. Same thing for the early big Byzantine folli, just not quite as old. My next book purchase will be the Failmezger book & the Carson Kent LBR book, and my next planned coin purchase will be some Rome URBS city commems. Thanks again for your site, Bill

 

very nice ancients :thumb:

 

I use the word "neat" to describe alot of ancients lol