My first ancient - Constantius II Falling Horseman

That only happens if you are religiously attached to old definitions of what is collectible. If you decided that you will only collect one thing, you get to a point where you only see something you need and can afford every so often. If you decide that you need to branch out and give a look at other things, it is like starting over. For 40 years I collected only Greek and Roman but then I started looking at Indian and medieval. I still consider Greek and Roman my first interest but there are now twice as many things to look at when I go shopping so I might see six coins I want where there used to be three. You also can decide to get minor variations on what you used to see as the same coin. Do you need one Falling Horseman? (I know a couple of you say no to that.) You could decide to do a one per mint set. You could decide to collect minor die variations. One can become 15 or 2000 that way. You also have to address the question of what you can afford. If you have been spending $500 a year on 100 $5 coins as a matter of collecting style, you can decide to spend the whole year researching $500 coins and buy just one instead.

 

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I believe the Bridgnorth Hoard was cleaned by the British Museum. I only have one but it looks like a old copper penny. The surfaces are not perfect by Lincoln cent standards but these are not Lincoln cents. Is the color 'natural'? No. Artificially retoned? Yes. Attractive? It is to me. I don't know what they looked like out of the ground but ancient collectors need to allow for the fact that 1600 to 2600 years is a long time and 99.99% of the coins were cleaned sometime in the last 500 years. Some were butchered, some conserved. You pick which you consider to be in each class.

My Bridgnorth coin (Trier mint):

 

Perhaps the pictures York is using don't do the Bridgnorth hoard coins justice. I very much like the color of that Trier mint coin, Doug.

 

Well, by the good grace of a fellow board member, I've managed to acquire a handful of these pieces for research.



One initial observation: some of these have a coin orientation, others a medal orientation, and one is altogether strangely rotated. Is orientation actually a proper way to analyze these coins? Or did the ancient Romans not care so much?

 

Nice lot there. Let's see close up images of them.

Ancient coins were made by hand so whatever way the flan was placed between the dies and whatever direction the dies were place is how the coin ended up more or less.

 

Well here's one. I can't quite make out the mint mark. Looks like "AH" but maybe the H is an N, so Antioch? Also, what does the E in the field in front of the soldier signify?

 

John Anthony => ummm, there is an awesome coin collecting book (recommended to me by dougsmit) where the Author's name is "John Anthony" ....

http://www.amazon.com/Collecting-Greek-Coins-John-Anthony/dp/0582503108


... coincidence?

 

Ha! Yes, it's a coincidence. It's all Greek to me. Anyway, Anthony is my middle name.

 

In left field on the reverse is the officina workshop number Epsilon. It is the 5th Greek letter in the alphabet and also representing the number five.

 

that last one has a nice color JA, very nice.