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As long as we're on monograms check this out:



A Leo obverse with Marcian monogram (star above) reverse. Style, legend and monogram look quite good. Could they have used a previous Marcian monogram with a newer Leo obverse die. Accidental or ?

 

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Mint suddenly got word that Leo is the new emperor. In his haste, after the new dies were made, a worker changed the obverse but not the reverse die. Ta-da, monogram mule.

Really though, not exactly sure. But I am sure of its very high coolness level

 

I almost jumped on one of these which I found out later was a fake. Very fortunate I was outbid on a fake Odoacer the same seller had.

 

Very interesting! I have a similar case, two Marcian nummus, with Theodosius II crosses:

 

I saw a lot of fakes of fifth century coins in the last months, fortunatelly are from an odd style!!

 

These are certainly mint issues. A scarcer type but the cross reverse is a listed variety for Marcian. I've got a couple of these myself.

 

Its nuts (not to reference the squirrel jokes on the previous page). I had long thought tiny fifth century bronzes would be one of the last areas to be faked on a large level, but looks like I was proved wrong unfortunately.

 

You've got to be careful, more so than ever before. Incredibly it appears that faking tiny bronzes is not an easy task. The ones I've seen are pretty awful, especially that ludicrous example of an Anthemius that was shown on a previous post.