A few weeks ago a fellow collector notified me that a seller on a small ancient coin Facebook group was offering an interesting denarius that might be imitative and that I should take a look. Looking at the coin it was definitely imitative in style but otherwise rather faithful to the anonymous Roma/Roma seated with she-wolf prototype and even better appeared to be good silver(as opposed to a plated fouree as many off-style denarii are). I found it very interesting so I quickly arranged to purchase it and it arrived last night. This coin comes from a category of imitations referred to as "monetary copies" first by Maria Chitescu and later by Phil Davis on his website about Imitations of Roman Republic Denarii. These coins faithfully reproduce their prototypes either via transfer dies or well-engraved new dies, though they are not always 100% accurate as can be seen here with the omission of the "R" in "ROMA" on the reverse as well as the missing wings on Roma's helmet. The official prototype that this coin copies is often badly struck on a tight flan, possibly explaining the missing "R", and many surviving official examples are missing the wings on the helmet as they seem to disappear with the tiniest amount of wear, so the engraver's omissions are perhaps not too surprising if the features were also missing on the source coin. While researching this coin and re-reading a bit on this category of imitations I was pleasantly surprised to find not one but two examples from these same dies represented on Phil Davis's site: the first being C45+ on his "Monetary Copies" pages and the second being one of the coins found as part of a large hoard in Romania in 2001. The dies that the Geto-Dacians used to produce their coins apparently didn't last long as few die matches are ever found so it is always nice to find a match or two which allows you to better work out what the full die looked like given how often these coins come mis-struck. Imitations of Roman Republic coinage, Geto-Dacians, AR denarius(3.72g, 21mm), after 115/114 B.C.. Imitating anonymous issue of circa 115/114 B.C.. Head of Roma right; behind, X and "OMA"(sic) / Roma seated right on pile of shields, holding spear; birds in flight to upper left and right; to lower right, she-wolf standing right, head left, suckling the twins Romulus and Remus. Cf. Crawford 287/1 for prototype; Davis, website class A, group Ib, Geto-Dacian Monetary Copies, C45(these dies) & Davis "A New Hoard of Denarii Imitations" 20(these dies) As always, feel free to post anything relevant.
fine and very collectible coin.. the most sincerest form of flattery and a work of art in its own right.
Thanks. These imitations all have an interesting oddball style to them and that's what makes them so cool(to me at least).
That's an excellent example of an Eravisci denarius. Not sure if you're aware but your actual coin is number 14 in "A Group of Eraviscan Denarii" published by Rob Freeman in Essays Hersh which published a small hoard of Eraviscan Denarii along with a die study. This one is #24 from that same paper and hoard:
One of my eraviscan coins.. and my Isiusiisiuisii coin .. Isiusiisiuisii. AR Denarius. 2.5g 18mm. obverse: bust of Isiusiisiuisii facing right,inverted legend: "ISIUSIISUISII" to left of bust... "IIIIIII" to right. reverse: "IIIII IIIII" Figure standing, holding spear and ball The finest and only known specimen.
I have seen many Republican copies and coins from the Antonine and Severan periods. I have missed seeing copies of the early empire through Trajan. Do these exist? Do the RR and Imperial period copies come from the same regions? Has there been any study of he later silvers? Pius a sestertius of Faustina II Commodus
A classic . In case someone coming upon this thread is baffled, here's where we were introduced to this rare king https://www.cointalk.com/threads/isiusiisiuisii.297628/
Most of these Republican imitations come from the Balkan area owhile the later coins seem to come from the Ukraine +surrounding countries
I don't know much about studies of the later silvers but I have seen a handful of examples said to have been found in Dacia and surrounding areas up to the reign of Trajan when Rome finally conquered the region but I've seen far fewer imitations of Imperial coins than Republican coins. A few such Imperial imitations are published on Phil Davis's website here. It's of course very hard to date the imitations themselves but the in the hoards I've seen, both published and unpublished, from Serbia, Romania, Hungary, etc. the latest official Roman issues in them tend to be of the Imperatorial period or of the reign of Augustus and these issues often exhibit a good bit of wear, sometimes even what seems to be decades of wear suggesting that these imitations were minted and circulated into at least the first few decades of the Imperial period but I can't quite explain why so few of the imitations from Dacia and surrounding areas actually imitate Imperial coins. Perhaps less Imperial coins were imported and thus, less were available for the local engravers? At any rate, one definite pattern I have noticed just from market data(i.e. eBay) is that a huge uptick in imitations seems to be associated with the Antonines and many of these imitations are found in Ukraine, Russia and other surrounding countries which seems to suggest to me that at least some of these later imitations were minted in this area rather than Dacia and Pannonia where many of these earlier imitations were minted. I know that there has been some work done to study these later imitations but much of it is inaccessible to me due to language barriers so I don't quite know the extent of it.
Great example. I don't have any imitative denarius but would love to, they are fascinating and sometimes their strange style looks very modern Q
