new arrival. stoked!

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

Nice!

 

That's an interesting portrait of Constantine. It doesn't look much like ones I'm used to seeing.

 

Doesn't look like Constantine at all. LOL. Congrats on the most non-Constantine, Constantine, one could possibly hope to own. It is a very nice coin indeed.

Mine looks rather English, but then again, it was a London Mint product.

 

Wow. Interesting coin. It looks as if Constantine is ready to peck out Licinius’s eyes with that beak.

I’ve been cataloguing the few Sol coins I have and now I’m considering trying to put together a small “mint city” set of this type. Of course, one coin from each mint wouldn’t even approach the variety of this series. But it would be a systematic start, and most coins would be quite affordable.

I’m not sure which cities struck this type. Victor Clark has examples from 8 mints: London, Lyons, Trier, Arles, Ticinum, Rome, Ostia, Siscia. Not sure if that’s exhaustive.

I love these coins. One is my avatar.

 

I got it through the kindness of Victor!
I hit it with some Magic Wadding (realizing of course I shouldn't have) because it was quite dark straight out of the package.

 

That Victor is a swell guy.

BTW, I'm fairly certain I found a die match with Piero della Francesca's Duke of Urbino.

 

Great looking coin davidharmier60firefox, well centered with good detail, nice.

 

Constantine does come in an amazing variety of portrait styles... never seen one like that before!

My Rome mint and my Sol:

 

that is a nice coin, at 1st glance, i thought it was Theodosius

 

I've noticed that Western mints like London and Trier tended to give Constantine a rather pudgy, effeminate look, while the mint at Rome may have been truer to life - by all accounts, he did have the aquiline features of many Romans. The Eastern mints kept his strong jaw, but frequently straightened out the nose.

 

I've wondered the precise opposite--that since his father Constantius was headquartered in Britannia, perhaps the London mint might have struck features truer to form.

Perhaps the late coinage in the East (Antioch and Constantinople of the late 320s/330s) is closer to statuary images I've seen of him, especially that colossal head now in the Capitoline museum. Give me an Antioch die engraver any day. I think they were the best die engravers of the fourth century.

 

Nice Constantine, the portrait does look different.

 

They really were all over the place with his portrait. Here's mine:


Constantine I, AD 306-337
Æ follis, 22mm, 2.9g, 12h; Rome mint, AD 314-315.
Obv.: IMP CONSTANTINVS P F AVG, laureate, draped and cuirassed bust right.
Rev.: SOLI INV-I-CTO COMITI, Sol standing half left, radiate, nude but for chlamys over shoulders and left arm, raising right hand commanding the sun to rise, globe in left hand, R over X on left, F on right

 

Super cool OP addition ... congrats, David-H (sweet pick-up)

Yah, I'm pretty sure that I only have one humble example of this cat ...






=> do double-doors do it for ya?

 

David,
Great coin with that "Nerva-esque" probiscus.

Yours appears as if there may have been some die damage directly on top of the nose surface. I can see what looks like a very normal edge of nose under what appears to be a blob of metal. This kind of shape is usually formed by unintended enlargement of the engraved portion of the die.

I'm a big fan of Constatine and family, and have a few of their issues with random blobs, which is ok and to be expected of ancients.

 

Nice Roman nose on that coin @davidharmier60firefox. My favorite portrait of Constantine I with Olive Oil on the reverse
CONSTANTINE I
AE2 Follis
OBVERSE: CONSTANTINVS P F AVG, laureate head right
REVERSE: IOVI CONSERVATORI, Jupiter standing left, holding globe & sceptre, wreath left, E right, dot SM dot TS dot in ex.
Struck at Thessalonica 312-313 AD
5.5g, 26mm
RIC VI 50b

 

I'm very fond of the Rome mint look for CI. We really don't know his exact face but I like the OP look.

A few others from Rome:

 

David, awesome new coin.

Doug

 

This is one of my favorites. His hair cut very much says "high school gym teacher" to me for some reason.



And here he just looks like a bad@ss.

More stuff from my pile of Constantine here.

http://www.forumancientcoins.com/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=6331