Not Fantasy Football but Fantasy Ancient coins - Play or ignore as you choose: The photo shows the contents of a junk box at your local coin dealer. All of the coins are priced the same but the dealer will not sell more than five to any one person. You may buy fewer if you feel the remaining coins are worth less (or worthless). If you choose to play, select what you consider to be the 5 'best' (your definition) coins. If the price is $20 per coin, would you buy the five you selected? If not, what would have to be the 'pick' price to make you interested in even just one coin (not interested at any price is an option). To help make your selections, I have included (in white) the mintmarks on the coins where that might make a difference (does it?). EDIT: Coin G is SNHdelta from Heraclea rather than SMNdelta - and I don't know how to replace the picture. All coins are circa 1200 or earlier with some in the BC range. Select coins of interest by letter, identify and explain why you would take that one. The file is large enough that you can click to see better up to the limits of this board (which reduced it considerably). NOTE: This is a game; hopefully it will be educational or enjoyable. NOTHING is for sale. There are a couple of 'ringers' in here. There is no prize. If you see no fun in this, you are but a click away....:hail:
I still consider myself a huge newb to ancients. I cant tell what mint mark is to where & I dont base my decisions on it. I just buy ancients by the look that appeals to me the most. So with that I will play the best that I can with my limitations. First pick would be "F", I like the overall details. Second would be "B". I only have one punch coin and it was some random freebie with a purchase from bargain bin so having one in better detail would compliment my freebie. Third would be "E". I have some doubts with this one but it looks like a nice little BC coin. Fourth & final $20 is "A" just cause I came close to buying one close to it but a small 11mm Indo won it out. A pick coin I would select "I" & about $15. Just for random my least favorite coin in this set is "C" but thats cause I have never been fond of just a coin with lettering. I like figures & portraits with my ancients.
The first I would pick would be E. It looks like a nice little bronze from Ionia with the bee and stag. At $20, it's a good price. It still has some good detail left. A nice coin from the roaring BC's! The second coin I would pick would be C, which appears to be a Quadrans from the early Roman Empire, probably from Caligula. So that would make it a coin worth having! That would be it for me. I wouldn't pick any others (even if worth more than $20) because all the rest fall outside of my current areas of interest. Thanks for the game! -tcore-
I like the quadrans (C), and the little greek (E) as well. For $20 a piece I would also buy (I) Greek?, (A) the jital, and (J) simply because the field marks intrique me. I loved the detail on (K) but I was stuck at 5 and because of that would avoid the partial flan. I already have a cholo coin or (D) wouldn't have been a bad coin either. Thanks Doug! Love to hear the results.
I might buy the jital, and at $10 each I would but H and I. I could probably make some money on J (and possibly K, but I can't read the obverse legend in the pic) at $20, but I'm not so concerned about that. Otherwise, I already have these or, more importantly, know what they are.
Thanks to all participating but especially to tcore who IDed the Ephesis, Ionia, bronze which I consider worth $20 in that grade and the Caligula quadrans which should bring at least twice that due to the name recognition of that ruler and the expense of his portrait coins. I was no fan of portraitless coins but found the RCC type special since it refers to the remittance of the 1/200th sales tax by Caligula. Some of the others require more specific ID to know if they are worth $5 or $100. I'm sorry the legend on K did not come through more clearly. It reads DNMAGNEN (T)IVSPFAVG. The question on that coin is how much to discount it for being broken. I'll let this ride a while to see if anyone ID's the sleepers. I figured the Caligula would go first because it is so easily readable (being in Latin helps). A,B and D are easily readable, too, but the clues are not Latin. I will say that none of the three are worth $20 if they are the most common variation but not all are the common types.
I'd definitely grab K first. I love that reverse, and I've been meaning to get a coin of Magnentius. I really don't care about a minor break like that, as it does do significant damage to the images, and what's left looks great. Heck, I have several coins worse off than that that I'm quite happy with. J would be my second choice, as I couldn't pass up a coin of Vetranio at that price. Third choice would be C, as I don't have a good quadrans at the moment (only a near slug that can barely be identified as a quadrans), and I would be quite pleased to finally have a Caligula coin. After that, I'd probably go for A or D, as I don't have many coins of India at all, and those look nice enough, though I might pass unless they were a little cheaper ($10-$15) if there were other coins around that were interesting me (my coin budget tends to be pretty low). As for why I wouldn't pick the others, the Gloria Exercitvs series doesn't really interest me much, so F and G wouldn't interest me unless they were really cheap (like $5). I know little enough about Greek coins that I wouldn't know what I was getting with E or I, and neither of them appeals to me much at the moment. I have no idea what H is, and while I've been meaning to pick up something like B, it's a lower priority.
I agree with Gao. If you can get a named Vetranio for under $100, it doesn't have to be perfect. I paid $85 for this one in 1996 and was happy to get it. There are many nicer than this but I still believe it is worth twice the others shown here. A and D are both premium rulers for their series and worth at least double the ordinary ones but so few people care that you might get them for less. A is one of the few Shahi coins which has the name of the ruler rather than just titles so I wanted it even at $20 while the same quality in other Shahi types might be $10. I'd not call D a Chola even though the type was derived from earlier Chola types. I considered B good because I could make out all of the marks and it is not the most common one so it was worth at least the $7 I paid which is more than I'll say about some of these punchmarked items. I thought I was cheap but even I was willing to pay $7 each for F and G. F is pretty and rated R1 in RIC so maybe it is worth more than average. There are few people who still pay extra for things RIC called R5 even though we all know that those ratings are very faulted. G is an R5 but not terribly attractive so I consider it about equal in value to the prettier and less rare F.
I'd grab C J K for sure. Maybe A or B (mainly just to have one example). I, looks interesting so maybe that one, but no clue what it is. ( or H )
Not me, too lazy today! But the first place I would check for H is southeast Asia in the early to mid 19th century. I confess, my plan with I would be to wait until I stumbled across another of the same type. If you don't know what to call the reverse (or if the reverse is too common) that's really the only effective way to go.
