Gallienus AE29 of Perge Pamphylia

Uncle!

 

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this is the handsome side.



i win.

 

Except that I'm pretty sure coins issued under the authority of SpongeBob SquarePants should be disqualified.

 

Great ugly coins! They are like our children. We love them regardless!

 

yah, I have a tender spot for ugly ducklings and odd ducks (great ugly additions, fellas)

 

Y'all uglies got smoked by Chrsmat.

 

NOT FAIR! He only showed one side.

 

Thats what I'm saying, his is so ugly its only got one side. lol

 

Maybe you're right. That other side must truly be U G L Y!

 

I feel so very, very shallow but seem to be a condition snob compared to most of us and can not play in this league. I certainly have a number of ugly coins but I try to limit them to coins that have a reason to be ugly. That might mean real rarities or coins I could not otherwise afford. That might include coins that became ugly due to a feature that also made them interesting like overstrikes. The one class of uglies I can not abide are coins that have been raped by harsh cleaning either chemical or wire brushing. I have a few coins in my numbered collection that are uglier than the coins I would give away to school kids but they all have some redeeming numismatic value. What is it that made each of you buy these ugliest of the uglies? Were they all included in group lots you bought because of some better coins? Were they individual purchases when you were new enough to believe that ancient coins all need to look 2000 years old (2000 hard years!)?

Below is a coin that was for years both my pride and a bane to my collection. It was the best I had of its RIC number (#16) but has since been upgraded. Since it was so important to me for so long as a coin I had when I started cataloging coins in 1987 (who knows when I got it before that), I could not bear to get rid of it just because I got a better one. I was proud to recognize it when I bought it so it is what I consider a good example of when it is right to buy a coin so ugly. Now it could not even be taken seriously in the ugly coin show.

 

Alright...it seems we've transitioned from Gallienus to uglies. I'm down with that.

Here's my submission. It's an ugly with a story. My first ancient, bought around 40 years ago when I was a kid living in Germany at the time, it must have been around 1974. My parents took me to visit the camp-gate and Roman ruins at Trier (Trevorum).

I still remember the visit to this day. One of the coolest things about the trip was that they let me spend around 5 Deutsch Mark on this way cool Roman coin. I remember thinking, this coin is sooo old, it's got to be worth big bucks some day. And believing I must have gotten a steal from the dealer hawking these at the tourist stand. I found it in a drawer a few years ago and now it sits in my album with all my other ancient coins.

Some kind of beat up barbarous radiate, I assume. The German writing on the 2x2 translates roughly to: Roman Empire, Emperor with radiate crown; Gallic afterstrike of an Antoninianus around 270 AD. Could it even be a barbarous radiate of Gallienus?

...oh yeah, she's ugly but this girl has sentimental value!

 

Both. Fortunately for me, I'm not so much of a condition snob that I can't love most of the dogs that I have. I occasionally still add uglies to my collection if they're :
a) types that I want
b) cheap enough to adopt
c) not just unidentifiable slugs
d) not tooled monsters
e) appealing to the part of me that thinks that even awful movies and bad music have a place in the world

 

I must admit that I have become more of a "condition snob" over the years; however, I still occasionally find a type I want at a price I can afford even though the condition stinks. Most of my uglies were early purchases I find it hard to part with.