Ok. I was hoping that this was going to arrive in 2016 but I have had to wait until 2017. This one has problems but it is exactly these problems that makes this coin attractive to me and worth the hefty premium I was willing to pay for this coin. This coin is one of those that gives us an insight into the processes used in the manufacture of ancient coins. Another reason for my interest is that this is an Eastern - COS II - Emesa denarius. Here is the obverse:- It is a COS I-I and has a double strike which can be clearly seen with the shaowed bust to the right and in the break in the obverse legend PE-RT Now here is the reverse:- There is much more going on here and this is where the primary interest in this coin lies. The visible legend reads FEILCI? VICTOR S.. The primary reverse type is "grain ear between crossed cornucopiae" and would typically come with the legend "FELICITAS TEMPOR". As we can see, something has gone awry here. Now flip the reverse and have a look at it and we can see another reverse type. This time we can see the legs and dress of Victory and at 9 o'clock we can see the wreath that Victory is holding. This type can come with a few reverse legends but we can suppose here that "VICTOR SEVER AVG" was intended with the reverse type "Victory walking left, holding wreath in right hand, palm in left". A little detective work turns up the following coin from the collection of Barry Murphy:- This coin shares the obverse die and shows a match for the "FELICITAS TEMPOR .." reverse die elements The Victory reverse die is something close to the following reverse die:- So the question is... what happened with this coin. Little/no documention remains on the manufacture process for these coins. Tests have been performed by experimental archeologists to try and determine how the process may have worked. During these experiments the obverse die was attached face up on some form of anvil. A blank was placed on top of this die and the reverse die placed over it, attached to something allowing it to be struck with a hammer and then the strike occured creating a single coin. This is fine until you try to increase the speed of the process amd it became evident that the reverse die would break quickly using this technique as the reverse die became hot. Curtis Clay explained to me some years back that during the study of a Middle Bronze in the Ashmolean collection with similar issues, C M Kraay put forward a theory that coins with perfect (or near perfect) obverses, but reverses overstruck with two different dies of the same type or two dies of different but contemporaneous types, must mean that those two reverse dies were being applied alternately and at rapid speed at one and the same obverse die. The overstrikes occur when a completed coin was not removed from the obverse die so was struck again with the second reverse die, before that worker could notice the mistake and abort, perhaps having dropped the new blank for example. Curtis also noted that these errors occur more frequently on large or mid sized bronzes than on denarii or antoniniani. This coin would seem to support this theory and is only the second I have obtained over the years of collecting. The previous was an Antoninianus of Aurelian. All this leads to this new addition to my collection of eastern denarii of Septimius Severus. Martin
I see no reason not to accept Curtis' explanation of the matter. Not all examples of this would have to involve two different types of reverse and it might be harder to spot examples where the second strike was made by a different die of the same type. Some I have seen show no movement on the obverse making the possibility of a simple overstrike less likely. Most seem to have one die axis at 12H and the other at 6H. Perhaps that has something to do with how the workers were arranged around the anvil and each was holding the die in the same orientation to his body rather than to the anvil??? Great coin! It would be on my top list for 2017 but you will probably do better several times over in the next 50 weeks.
Very cool error that I would welcome to my collection anytime. I see them listed on later romans on ebay, but they list them too high so I tend to avoid them
That's the kind of story I like to read in front of my fireplace on a saturday evening (8 PM here already), thanks Martin for sharing and for the convincing explanations. Q
Awesome, Martin ... yah okay, I must admit that some of your "specialty" coins are way over my head, but this sweet OP-gem is directly in my wheel-house ... => I "love" errors and/or overstrikes and/or counter-marks ... so this is a total winner (congrats) ... it's a "fun" coin
There certainly do seem to be a lot of Severan collectors on this board (not that there is anything wrong with that).
