I'm very happy with this latest addition, bit rough , but with a good weight of 20 gram fits well between my other Roman Republic copper coins.
Rough but very cool!!! My 'anonymous' semis...It's been 'around the block' a few times LOL: Circa 208 BC, Saturn/Galley, Crawford 106/5
Very nice Semis @Andres2 ! This is my version... we have a type that aaways looks like it has been around the block a few times... Roman Republic Anonymous Issue 211-207 BCE AE Semis Saturn S behind Prow S Roma Crawford 56/3; Sear 766
What's the weight and diameter of this one? At first glance it does not strike me as being a Rome mint emission from this era.
Great OP-score, Andres2 => congrats on the Semis (very cool) Ummm, I have an example as well ... => "S" is for Semis and Saturn!! ... right, Mentor?
I think it's probably an imitative/local small change type of Spanish origin based on the style. I don't know a lot about these types unfortunately. The standard reference on them, Michael Crawford's "Unofficial imitations and small change under the Roman Republic" from AIIN 29, 1982, is a text that has so far eluded me. PS: if anyone reading this can help me find a copy, please, please PM me
@stevex6 I see something before the prow of your semis. Is it a dolphin? Edit: I think Steve's dolphin semis is unofficial. See #66 of Crawford's "Unofficial imitations and small change under the Roman Republic" AIIN 29, 1982. The orientation of the dolphin is reversed from Crawford's official Dolphin Series 80 (for which Crawford lists no semis). The dolphin orientation matches the unnoficial semis #66 from the above article.
Carausius => hey, thanks for noticing my cool coin => this is what I was given when I purchased this neat dolphin example ... Roman Republic Post Reform Æ Semis (Anonymous) Circa 88 BC (?) Rome mint Diameter: 21mm Weight: 5.96 grams Obverse: Laureate head of Jupiter right; S (mark of value) behind Reverse: Prow of galley right; S (mark of value) above; to right, dolphin downward, ROMA in exergue Reference: Crawford –; Sydenham –; BMCRR II, p. 589, 10 Obviously, there are a few shaky details ... => Firstly, Mentor told me that it's Saturn, not Jupiter ... plus, I don't have a real date for this sweet example ... and until now, I haven't really had a solid reference-number for my example Carausius => if you could give me a link to your info, that would rock (if not, thanks for the coin-lead)
@stevex6 There's no internet link to the reference. The reference is in a book (remember those?) that has not been published online.
Regretfully I have none in my collection, but here is a nice Roman Republic Quniarius from around the time period. Roman Republic Ca. 211-208BC Anonymous AR Quniarius Roma hd Craw 44-6
Is there anything significant on RR bronzes that has been published since Crawford? It seems a lot of the attributions must be made based on find spots of hoards but these records can be reinterpreted every time someone discovers a new hoard. Considering the budget problems in Italy over the last half century, I wonder how much of this evidence is just sitting there unstudied. Do you consider Crawford the final word or just the best you have that made it into print. I do know we had the Harlan books covering a few years out of the whole but I recall their being met with less than total agreement in some adjustments. What steps do you recommend a young Canadian collector take to help him attribute his coins? We might ask the same on behalf of old Viginians, too. A semis (the only one I have).
Crawford is the best starting point, and Crawford numbers are generally the best language for collectors discussing the series but it's certainly not the last word. Andrew McCabe's paper on anonymous bronzes is free(but requires login) and discusses various types not fully identified by Crawford. Hersh's "Additional overstrikes" from ANS Museum Notes 1987(unfortunately only available via JSTOR) includes some previously-unpublished bronze overstrikes as well though much of the information is summarized in McCabe's paper. Roberto Russo's paper on unpublished RR bronzes in "Essays Hersh" identified several new types as well, mostly unpublished denominations related to existing series but some of his findings suggest that existing series should be broken up into multiple series based on different characteristics. With respect to attributions, it's believed that most RR bronze and silver was minted at the Rome mint and the early bronze and denarius system silver minted at the Rome mint follow a certain stylistic progression. Where it becomes difficult is the massive amount of Second Punic War-era field coinage. Spain, Sicily, Luceria, Etruria, Apulia, Sardinia and Rome were all minting coins during this period, and there seem to have been other military mints sporadically minting coinage as well. Luckily, for the most part these issues are mint marked, and where they're not, style can be used as a determining factor because these mints seemed to use local engravers. While it's true that there are potentially differing interpretations of hoard and find evidence, for the most part the finds do tend to cluster around particular areas. Sometimes these can be only generalized to large areas(I.e. "central Italy", "southeast Italy", etc) but tend to paint a reasonably good picture of the geographic distribution of these different military field mints. Much of the evidence for this is discussed in either Crawford's RRC or the Companion book "Roman Republic Coin Hoards", as well as various excavation reports. There's a whole rabbit-hole that can be gone down if one is interested in really deeply studying the attributions but for the average student who just wants to discover the coinage and get a feel for the various styles and things, my top free suggestions are: The McCabe paper discussed above NAC 61 and 63, the RBW collection, or if you're willing to spend a bit the combined volume of the two published by NAC(the individual PDFs were available from NAC's site at one time. If no longer available, PM me) Andrew McCabe's website which includes many RR coins arranged by Crawford as well as specialist pages on the coinage of Canusium and Luceria The Goodman Collection, CNG 43, Triton I, 45, 46 and 47 available online free, courtesy of CNG on ISSUU or alternatively, CNG 43 with RBW's annotations available on my website here
I just spent considerable time writing a lengthy repy to @dougsmit question, only to have my work dissappear because my login expired. Very frustrating and I don't have time to retype it. Red caught most of it.
Thanks to you both. In the above are you referring to coins like the one below or is there a code list for the many symbols on prow reverse coins which you are calling mintmarks? I see letters that sometimes relate to known moneyer families but there are many with donkeys, wolves and other symbols that I suppose could have a meaning I am missing including their being mintmarks.
When it comes to these Janus types that's still a bit up in the air - though I'm told by Andrew McCabe that a forthcoming work by Frey Kupper will have more answers. Mint mark is not necessarily the correct word for what I'm talking about though, because there were marks(both of symbol types and letter types) in use both at the Rome mint and at these various fields mints. "Series mark" is more correct in this context, although still not perfect because there is more than one instance where the same mark was used for two different series and they must be differentiated by style alone rather than any technical description. Exactly what these were used for is not known. We know that some of the lettered varieties corresponded to names as you mentioned, and also that grain-ear(or corn-ear if you're reading most references) with or without additional symbols is used several times for types from Sicily, and the "MP" on one series of victoriati is traditionally thought to mean "Metapontum" but there's so solid evidence for this and the type is too scarce for hoard evidence to confirm this so far. This is complicated by the fact there there are coins that are obviously related to some of these "marked" issues by style(and occasionally even by die matches) but do not bear a mark. Maybe they were just engraver errors, or maybe something different, who knows. As an example of all this, the first two coins below were struck in Central Italy - likely Etruria - and have a "staff"(the line) above the prow. The next two(not my coins) were struck in Rome, to roughly the same weight standard and around the same time and also bear a staff(and for the triens, it's even on the obverse) but are in very different styles. The final coin(also not mine) seems to be related to the first based on obverse style, in particular the wide staring eyes, but bears no staff. Similar coins are known with stylistic similarities to other "staff" types but with no symbols. Were these an earlier or later issue cut by the same Central Italian engravers? Who knows? But they seem to be related.
