Either the die engraver was hungover or had his mind on other things. Divus Vespasian AR Denarius, 2.92g Rome Mint, 79-80 AD RIC T359a (C), BMC T124, RSC 149 Obv - DIVVS AVGVSPVS (sic) VESPASIANVS; Head of Vespasian, laureate, r. Rev - Column mounted by shield and topped by urn, flanked by two laurels; in field, EX, on shield, S C Ex Private Collection. A Divus Vespasian denarius struck under Titus with an interesting engraver's error in the obverse legend - 'P' instead of 'T' in AVGVSTVS. Very likely unique to this one die. The style and weight are good - so, an official product of Rome. I wonder how many coins were struck with the error die until it was noticed? Post your error coins!
Nice error! It's always fun finding these little things, and they make finding die matches that much easier. I had to compete with Doug for the one below, though apparently we were the only ones who wanted it. Below the prow reads FRVGF instead of FRVGI. It's not listed as a variety of the type in Crawford but style and weight are consistent and after some careful searching I found a double die match in the ANS collection that proves it wasn't just some artifact of tooling or corrosion or anything like that.
Ew! PUS! That's a neat detail I might've overlooked the first three or four times I looked at the coin.
Maybe first one, then the other! Or maybe one person did both the laughing and the flogging! Reminds me of a certain patriotic US Civil War token that has a spelling error. It's supposed to say, "THE FLAG OF OUR UNION / IF ANYBODY ATTEMPTS TO TEAR IT DOWN / SHOOT HIM ON THE SPOT". But what actually got engraved was, "... SHOOT HIM ON THE SPOOT". Which makes me wonder if the errant engraver got himself a boot to the spoot, whatever that is! (They probably weren't doing too much laughing at the time, with all this talk of shooting people. Ever noticed how folks tend to take things rather seriously in a time of civil war? Funny thing, that. Or ... not.) Images: civilwartokens.com.
PS- and circling back around to the original topic, I'll bet Vespasian himself would've laughed, since he's recorded as having had a sense of humor, even on his deathbed. You've gotta admire that in a person who's the ruler of the known world. Then again, I suppose such people can afford to have a sense of humor. But it's surprising how often they don't.
Knowing what we know of Vespasian, I would suspect the former! However, the coin was struck by Titus, the Roman JFK, so I'm sure the engraver slept well that night.
Very neat, David... I love these minor mess-ups at the mint . Missing an "S" on the reverse: ANTONINUS PIUS AR Denarius. 3.2g, 19.5mm. Rome mint, AD 138. RIC 9 var. (rev legend). O: IMP T AEL CAES HADRI ANTONINVS, bare head right. R: AVG PIVS P M TR P COS DE (sic!) II, Minerva standing left, holding Victory in her right hand and shield with her left; spear leaning on her left arm. SEV SEV!: SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS Scarce. AR Denarius. 2.95g, 17.5mm. Eastern mint, AD 194-195. RIC 370 var. (obv legend). O: IMP CAE L SEV (sic!) SEV-PERT AVG COS II, laureate head right. R: CERERI-FRVG, Ceres standing left, holding wheat ears and long torch. Ex Curtis L. Clay Collection LIBERATAS??: GORDIAN III AR Antoninianus. 4.02g, 22mm, Rome mint, early AD 239 - early 240. RIC IV 67 var. (rev legend - not noted in RIC); cf. Gemini Auction IV (8 Jan 2008) Lot 460 (same rev die legend error). O: IMP GORDIANVS PIVS FEL AVG, radiate, draped, cuirassed bust right. R: LIBERATAS (sic!) AVG III, Liberalitas standing front, head left, holding counter in right hand and cornucopiae in left hand.
Sometimes we have errors that are errors but some are more signs that the mint workers were Latin as a second language at best and possibly just illiterate copying from some original. Greek speakers often had trouble with the letter R which does not exist in Greek. The #1 'error' in my book is the Septimius Severus Emesa mint reverse which regularly reads SPQR OPTIMO PBINCIPI substituting B for R but only in one case. These are common. Much more scarce are the coins that spell the word correctly. There are other coins of this mint that make the same substitution. Here is FORT BEDVC for FORT REDVC. Again the substitution only hit the second R with the first being normal. My favorite is this Domna with two B's: VENEBI VICTBICI for VENERI VICTRICI. Two dies show the same error of L for the second I but the other two I's are normal. INVICTO IMP Sometimes we catch our errors and fix them. Here is a C cut over the error V. There must be thousands of such errors.
Nice David. PHRYGIA, Trajanopolis. Hadrian AE 15 Athena standing Reference. Very rare. cf. RPC III, 2471;Cf. Varbanov 2705. http://rpc.ashmus.ox.ac.uk/coins/3/2471/16/ Obv: KAICAP AΔPIANOC. Laureate bust right, slight drapery on far shoulder. Rev: TPIIANOΠOΛITΩN (sic). Athena standing right, holding spear and resting hand upon shield. 2.42 gr 15 mm 7h Note. Misspelling of the ethnic on the reverse.
You have made a very good point about these errors being more prone at certain times and places. During the Flavian period at Rome these types of mistakes were quite rare. I would assume during that time most of the engravers at the Rome mint must have spoke Latin(?).
You're right about it being an error that doesn't readily stand out ... which makes me wonder just how many coins from this die survived unnoticed.
