Here are denarii that are not official products o the official mint. This should be pretty obvious to all. I believe they are ancient and probably the product of barbarous operations (three different ones - these are too different to be all from one shop). I have many fourrees but prefer unofficial coins that are made from 'appropriate silver'. The Antoninus Pius is certainly not correct style but has good metal. The legends are just plain wrong on both sides. There is no AVG on the obverse but a single C where it should be. VIRTVS AVG on the reverse would be better if the R were not more like a pi or, perhaps, an inverted V. Diva Faustina I has proper spelling but the style is quite barbarous. The metal is good. Marcus Aurelius' portrait is really not all that bad and the legends are correct but the Hilaritas reverse was used for Faustina II and Commodus and not for Aurelius. The reverse figure is also not correct with the face looking more like Antoninus Pius than a female personification. The metal is solid but a bit porous and, I suspect, a bit lower in silver content than used at the Rome mint. I have no idea where and when these were made but my best guess is that all were made to provide circulating money for people in the far reaches of the empire or nearby non-Roman lands who had seen and liked the idea of a cash economy but did not have normal supplies from Rome. Does anyone have any Antonine unofficial coins?
Nice!! ... wow Mentor, those are so fricken cool (congrats) Yah, I only have "one lone" barbarous coin and it's a stinkin' LRB (so I won't post it) => again, those are amazingly cool (uh-oh, I hear Martin thumbing-through his collection!!) You rock (you've got this)
I don't think I have seen barbarous imitations of coins of the Antonines before. I tend to think more of Tetricus and his ilk. Those are super interesting, I wonder how many of them exist? It would be nice to know where they were made. Maybe a hoard will be discovered that helps pinpoint the location.
Thousands. Most collectors of the higher echelons avoid them like the plague. There are more Severans if my recollection is correct. I have not updated my page on them for a long time. I find some more interesting than others. http://www.forumancientcoins.com/dougsmith/wild.html Our Valentinian has a nice page on the subject: http://esty.ancients.info/imit/
Funny, I find the unusual coins more interesting in some ways than the official issues. I never read your Severan page before, good stuff. The portrait styles are so goofy! The fifth one down (IMP CAE L SEP SEV PERT AVG, VIRT AVG TRP COS)makes Septimus look like he is Amish.
Very nice examples! All I have is this fourrée of Marcus Aurelius. MARCUS AURELIUS Fourrée Denarius. 3.4g, 17.5mm. Imitating a Rome mint denarius of Marcus Aurelius, circa mid-2nd century AD. Cf. RIC 92. O: ANTONINVS AVG ARMENIACVS, laureate head right. R: P M TR P XVIII IMP II COS III, Mars, helmeted, in military dress, standing right, holding inverted vertical spear in right hand and resting left hand on round shield set on ground.
On the third example in the OP, the style looks pretty good, is there any possibility that it is an officially produced mule?
Those are neat Doug. The closest I have would be this mule of Verus, sold as a counterfeit. Not official, but not like yours either.
I like these three and would have bought all of them for the right price. Faustina kind of reminds me of those Arabian imitation owl tets you see every once in a while.
I wish more dealers would carry this stuff, it's so cool. Thanks for posting! The coin below is distantly based on a Sept. Severus denarius (walking Mars), issued by the Taman Goths (Black Sea area)... probably fairly late 3rd or even 4th century, though. I don't think anyone will be mistaking this for a Rome mint product.
Very unlikely. An official mule would be better than 'pretty good'; it would be 'right'. There are genuine coins in good metal with dies cut by a worker having a bad day but when the metal is a little bad and the lettering is a little different and....... Is it possible that the coin was made after hours or by a retired mint worker? We will never know. These are the unanswerable questions that make these interesting and frustrating at the same time. Coins like this are many times more scarce that the 'real thing' but that does not mean you should pay many times the price. They are what they are even though we may not know what that is.
Very interesting material. I have a few mid-2nd century barbaric denarii that were reportedly part of a huge treasure containing thousands of 'good' denarii and 100 or 200 barbs. It was found near Kursk I believe, some years ago. The latest were from about 195 AD. The Taman Goth coins are products of a separate coinage development, derivations of derivations, a process of centuries.
So you would put these issues into the fifth century or even later? The hearsay I gathered said the Taman Goths left the peninsula in the mid 4th century so according to Soviet archeologists, at least, the most barbarous versions couldn't be more than 150 years old. I'd be interested to hear any evidence to the contrary.
I don't have access to my books at the moment, but I will try and find it out. But usually, barbaric imitations date from a very short time after the originals they were copying. In the case of the Taman Goths, there was a much longer development. It's clear that your coin is not a direct copy, I expect many people don't recognize a Septimius Severus coin in it.
I have one Antonine imitation, it's a denarius with sacrificial implements, a youthful head of Caracalla, but clearly not a regular coin. The lettering is not quite like the original, but not so bad either, you can read AVR ANT ONINVS on the obverse. Reverse: AVG PII FIL, that's reasonable for SEVERI AVG PII FIL . Weighs 2.7 gr., diameter 17 mm. This is the example:
People in the day valued the metal content of their coins so I would expect coins closer to the ones they copy to be closer to them in weight/metal, too. The coins I showed above are close to the officials in these regards so I doubt they are greatly later than them. Proving such things seems unlikely.
