"ANCIENT ANT"

Those are gorgeous thread-additions, TIF .... thanks for posting them!!

Oh, and thanks again for your coin advice (I always love hearing your opinions before I pounce)

=> thanks for your coinpliments, gang ... please post any of your relevant or irrelevant coins!!

 

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Wow. That is a sweet-looking coin. Me like!

Here's my "ant" coin. When these were dicovered in the Song Dynasty, the Chinese numismatists were unable to decipher the inscription, so they named it BiQian, or "ant money." The nose coin is the other, more-common variety most of you are familiar with. These are called ant-nose (technically "ant-and-nose) coins as a collective because the two most common varieties were undecipherable and they looked like their respective names.

Here are all of the ant-nose coins in my collection. The first four are "nose" coins, while the next one in an "ant" coin. The next one is "Jun" or "nobleman," and the last one is "Xing," or "crossroads."

 

That's unusually well-detailed for a Pb tessera - no mistaking it for anything BUT an ant. Nice score!

 

Thats pretty cool. Nice score

 

^ this is the same type that Tif posts a little further down. Its a bee.

Steve, glad you won it! Its a great, high grade example. I've developed quite an interesting menagerie from these Asia Minor leads.

 

I made sure now that it's absolutely the same tessera as Tif's. Tthe same lettering, the same kneeling stage on obverse., along withe the Greek letters Epsilon and Phi on obverse. However it's worth noting that the weight is different. Mine weighs 2.08 g.whereas Tif's tessera weighs 5.14 g. Could that have a meaning regarding the value of ancient tokens ?

 

If you find Tif's full thread on the piece, you'll see that weight doesn't really matter. A quick CoinArchives search shows that weights routinely range from 2 to 5 grams.