The best things come in small packages........ I have just purchased this week a group of 50 Roman coins which i have cleaned, they range from utterly absurd tiny to about 10mm. I love the tiny ones.... Now just the attribution........enjoy them for a bit..........then off to their new homes. It must have been odd handing over one of these for something back in the day.....but as i understand it, the Romans probably bagged them up and weighed them, so a deal would have been done with a weight of small coins. The middle coin on finger has a small cross on the reverse...?
The tiny ones are where the best discoveries can be made. Everyone loves big coins. One time from a good seller I bought by the pound and got a whole bunch of tiny ones. However, there were lots of great little tidbits in there. Always remember the tiniest romans were made in the 5th century, mainly a period of rare coins.
cool ... I love the small babies as well (I have a handful of really nice examples) Huh? => yah, I think I like the really tiny ones, but I also like the big babies too (Asses, sestertii ... oh, and don't forget those big Ptolemy buggers, eh?) Oh but wow => man, I can hardly wait to see what you're gonna show us!! (please, bring it!!)
Yes! I'm a big fan of these tiny soldiers/standards coins. Here's one of the nicest ones I've ever collected...
One of my favorite small coins... Tauric Chersonesos, Pantikapaion AE13, 1.61g; circa 310-302 BC Obv.: Head of Pan right, dotted border Rev.: ΠAN-TI; bow in bow case Reference: BMC474, SNG Cop 50
The cross reverse is most common for Theodosius II but there are others and many coins lack enough legend that they are hard for the amateur (like me) to ID for sure. I handle this by not buying coins of this period that I can not ID without references leaving the rarities to 5th century specialists. I make it harder on myself by avoiding coins where I can't read the mintmark at least enough to know the city. Insisting on full legends pretty much means you have few coins, very few coins. Notice that between the early 5th century Theodosius II and the late Leo I the coins shrank by about half.
I am very glad you have posted these pics Doug, because i am almost certain one of the coins i have (tiny one) has the last reverse...... I once sold a minim which was about 9mm across and had an almost perfect fallen horseman reverse in miniature, really nice coin which made decent money for something so small.
Considering the terrible state of the obverse legends on so many of these, the monogram reverse of the last coin is very nice to have as long as you have a chart of monograms to use for comparison. After someone tells you that the monogram reads LEONIS, you can convince yourself that the coin has the right letters to be a Leo. The CON mintmark is weak but there. The portrait shows an eye, ear, mouth and weak nose but you have to have a better imagination than I do to read any obverse legend. Still I have trouble looking at this coin and saying it is high grade. My other Leo with the monogram reverse has no mintmark but can be attributed to CONstantinople by the variety from that mint substituting a Greek lambda for the Latin L in Leo on the obverse. The coin shows a natural hole sloping through the flan (dirt filled) and two casting sprues showing these little flans were cast in a group. I considered this coin very fortunate to have the lambda so clear and the hole placed so as not to ruin either the portrait or the monogram. I really would like to have had the CON mintmark. This coin at 1.2g weighs twice the other coin. I have not heard any suggestion that there were more than the one denomination on these. I went through a phase in 1998 where I was buying 5th century common coins but never could bring myself to pay the prices asked for the rarities that tend to be much uglier than these two beauties.
I am going to carefully clean my coin to try and unveil the full detail........I'll post if it works and keep quiet if it doesnt. Thanks for the info on these two fabulous coins Doug
