Superb Crispus

Excellent pick-up Sallent! Here is my only Crispus:

 

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That is nice and sharp, with excellent strike and good style, and that is some great deep black patina. A very desirable beauty.

 

Really good looking Crispus, Sallent!

John

 

My Crispus closed-door campgate:

 

I bid on one of these recently and got blown out of the water! Rare and with a special flan, I'd be interested to hear more about this coin.

 

Bought it on ebay probably 20 years ago for around $75 and it turned out to be one of the few I've ever seen. I had all three of these (Constantine, Crispus and Licinius Jr) at one point but I sold (actually traded) the latter. Just curious what you mean by "special flan"?

 

I almost feel like I'm fessing up to committing heresy, but I've never owned a single campgate coin. I've always wanted one, but things haven't quite worked out. It is still at the top of my list. That's probably one of my biggest regrets in this hobby, that with all the LRBs I've added over the last year, I've not got me a campgate.

The thing is that LRBs are a weak area for me, I don't know a lot about them, so I tend to get ones with portraits that really called my attention, and none of them had campgate reverses. It just sort of worked out that way.

 

Campgates are great... you really should add one.

 

The ones I've seen, including yours, have a medallic look to them, where the flan extends beyond the border dots, plus they're very carefully struck and centred. Suggests a special presentation issue to me. (I haven't made a study of it at all, though... I could be way off base from having seen an unrepresentative sample.)

 

The lowly little campgate can sometimes surprise you. This one is a kind of companion to the three turret gate from Rome that Brian showed. This one is four turrets no-door from Rome with a special obverse for Crispus, at least as the obverses for the gates tend to go.

I bought it back around 2000. It commanded over $400 at the time, but I have not seen another since.

 

Nice!

 

Camptown Races:


RI Constantine I CE 306-337 Æ Follis 19mm 3.2g Siscia CE 326-7 AVG Laureate R - PROVIDENTIAE AVGG Camp gate 2 turrets no door star RIC 200

 

Yeah, I definitely need one. So far this is about as close to a campgate as I've gotten....city walls.

 

I agree with you. The three closed door LRB types are all very scarce to rare and must have been struck to commemorate or represent something. There has to be some meaning of a camp gate with open doors and closed doors other than the simplistic welcome / not welcome symbolism or just a basic design variation. Have no idea what it is though.

 

Excellent Crispus! It looks as if it's in mint condition. Nice homage to an unfortunate soul. Your post sparked my interest—his father certainly seems to have had some mental health issues.

 

All emperors had mental health issues. Kind of hard not to when you are placed in a position of absolute power, then are told constantly that there are threats against your life. Some of these threats are real and some imagined, but if you fail to act you know from the experience of your predecessors that assassins could hiding in every corner waiting to kill you....so you start to become paranoid over even the most ridiculously sounding plots. After a while you start to see a knife around every corner, and poison on every plate of food or goblet of wine....Wait, did I just see my sister whispering to a senator? What kind of treachery are they plotting?

Then there is the fact that you are expected to go out and commit genocide against a barbarian tribe or two once in a while in order to show your military strength, and when you are home you are expected to throw games for the population (and attend those games) and watch hundreds of people being hacked to death or eaten by animals day in and day out, sometimes for 100 days in a row.

Some emperors managed all of this better than others, but I think it was all a matter of various degrees of insanity ...namely some of them could deal with the paranoia and the personality disorders far better than others (and there you have the difference between a "good emperor" and "bad emperor.")

 

I wonder how many of them were addicted to opiates.

 

Some of mine Crispus coins:

 

Everyone's got some nice Crisp Crispus Coins. I know I'm late to the game but I have two in which I dug out of an uncleaned lot a year ago. They still need some cleaning but I haven't had time to attribute them.


Definitely a campgate. Mint mark looks like: dotESISdot so Siscia



This one looks to be Crispus but not quite sure until I get time to clean it.

I've been shocked to get them this far compared to what they look like before. I found my stash of uncleaned coins that have never been attributed and some that still need cleaning.

 

Nice new pickup Sallent!