I was just looking through the far too many coins on my desk and I spotted this kind of ragged and non-photogenic, but interesting, 14mm Greek bronze: Apollonia Pontika, Thrace; mid 4th-3rd centuries BC Ox: Laureate head of Apollo right. Rx: ΔIXA - ΛKIH: Anchor; A to left, crayfish to right The reverse inscription certainly seems to be Greek for "dichalkon", which is also the denomination of the coin. I was trying to think of any other ancients that included the coin value as part of the inscription but couldn't come up with any. Curious if anyone knows of any other examples.
Very interesting! Coins with a letter or marks in the fields indicating denomination are out there, but I don't recall seeing coins with it spelled out like that.
Small silver from Kolophon used the abbreviations for denominations. Below are HM for hemiobol and TE for tetartemorion. No it is not spelled out but, really, what size letters would you need to spell tetartemorion on a coin 5mm across?
You have so many coins on your desk that you don't know what you have? Wow man. When I get coins, they are photographed and cataloged within the same day. Anyway, that's a very interesting coin, and, being ragged and non-photogenic is my kind of coin.
I posted a photo of my desk earlier last year. Here it is today, and by the way, these are all different coins than last year. My wife just walks in and shakes her head. But to my credit I did photograph the coins on the right side shown by the red arrow in the last week.
It makes me want to take a shower and then clean it all up and file it under OCD!! I'm glad that you're loving the coin collecting, my cool friend (everybody has their own style, eh?)
@stevex6 : I suspect for most of the folks here if they had $1000 to spend on ancients they would buy one or two nice pieces. I personally would rather buy 50 - $20 coins or 100 - $10 coins (particularly Greek or provincial bronzes) that I can spend time identifying and studying. I'm not sure that's OCD but maybe it is.
ahaha => I merely meant that I'd be fricken terrified of losing all of my sweet lil' coins ... I am totally OCD and I have an obsession to organize my coins as soon as I get 'em (but *whatev*) ... like I said, to each his own Oh, and If I had $1000 to spend, I'd probably buy 5 x $200 (that's my sweet-spot)
This isn't a particularly great example because of the condition, but on this Corinth trihemiobol the four corners of the incuse have the letters T-P-H-I, spelling out the denomination.
