What's up with this RR denarius?

Look at the coin pictured below and tell me what you see -

Roman Republican AR Denarius
Publius Aelius Paetus; Rome mint; 138BC.
Obv - Helmeted head of Roma r.; behind, X
Rev - The Dioscuri galloping r.; below, P·PAETVS and in ex - ROMA.
Banker's marks on obv.; otherwise Very Fine; 3.57 grams, 20mm.
From the E.E. Clain Stefanelli collection.
Crawford 233/1, dies = 73 / 91
BMCRR Rome 877, Grueber mentions two types of ear ring: grape bunch & spiral
Babelon Aelia 3
Sydenham 455
Sear 110
RBW 968

I have another one from a previous auction -

 

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Looks to either be an offset or flipover double strike of some sort or possibly an overstruck coin. Double strike is much more likely but it would be cool if proven to be an overstrike, as RR silver overstrikes are very rare.

 

Overstrike?

 

Looks like one Dioscuri lost his head!!!!

 

My guess is flip-over double strike. This one has both Dioscuri visible in front of Roma's nose. I can not line-up the under-type on the reverse.

I have one I posted earlier that was less obvious.
https://www.cointalk.com/threads/ov...or-what-i-need-some-help.277940/#post-2407543

 

this is for me to cartoon

 

The style is absolutely normal for this period.

 

I can beter stay by my period

 

I've attepted to add the type to my collection. I really like your second example the "previous auction", rr.

 

@TIF can you do the same for this coin, ie overlay the reverse on the obverse and vise versa? I can see the rear Dioscurii on Roma's nose. I am having trouble matching something from the obverse on the reverse (unless that is an X at the end of the exergue line).
I really do need to improve my picture taking and manipulating skills. Unfortunately that part of collecting is the least fun for me.

 

I'll give it a shot sometime today, probably this evening

 

Congrats on that coin and on the Clain-Stefanelli provenance. I have 3 from that collection and am always looking for more. It was an interesting collection.

 

@rrdenarius, I played around with the images briefly today but didn't shed much light on anything. I'll try again Thursday or this weekend. PM me if you can give more details about what you think is going on with the coin-- I'll need some help with the overlays.

 

@rrdenarius if you want to take a shot at it yourself, there's a fairly easy way to overlay two images with transparency in the free photo editor GIMP(GNU Image Manipulation Program). Here's a quick writeup of how I do it. This is how I verify die matches and even make animations like some I've previously posted

So if you're only using one coin, open the coin's photo and using the "Select" tool, select one side of the coin. Hit ctrl+X to "cut" the selected region, or ctrl+C to copy it(i.e. if you're checking for a rotated double strike so comparing obverse to obverse):


Step 2: Hit ctrl+V to "paste" the selected region, then use the move tool(the one with the + sign) to move the second image over top of the first one


Step 3: Make a layer with the pasted image by right clicking and clicking "To new layer":


Step 4: Left-click the new layer to select it, then using the "opacity" slider above the layer stack or the little arrows on the right side of it, play with the transparency. I find it helpful to move it back and forth while comparing details.


Step 6: Move(using the same move tool used before) and rotate(using the tool that looks like this ) the top layer to try and get the desired orientation.


Step 7(Optional): Scale the image up and down if need be. Probably not needed in your case but sometimes needed for doing die comparisons where you are working with images of different sizes. You can do this in either percent or pixels, both have their uses:


Using these techniques and saving images at each step of opacity(i.e. 5, 10, 15, 20, etc.) and then using GIMP's GIF export capability you can make some pretty cool comparison images like the one below. I can do a howto on this if you're interested at some point as well:

 

Overlays are more impressive when there is a larger centering difference. The obverse below hardly shows there were two coins.

 

The coin arrived today. It is a flip over double strike. I did not notice the TV at the base of Roma's neck, but it is easy to see in the pic above. It is less easy to see how the obverse sits relative to the X at the end of the exergue line. I think the Dioscurii heads did not have enough metal in front of Roma to fill the die and have shrunken heads.
An interesting coin. I think I may have enough error coins for a time.

 

It looks to me like your Dioscuri are being attacked by a dragon. Perhaps Trogdor the Burnanator?

Seriously though cool ancient error coin