You know you should buy the coin when...

That's a great Venus. Here's mine



IMP TITVS CAES VESPASIAN AVG P M
Laureate head of Titus right

TR P VIIII IMP XIIII COS VII PP
Venus standing right her back turned towards spectator, holding helmet and transverse spear and resting on column

Rome 79AD

2.89g

Sear 2507
RIC 16 (R2)

 

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This anonymous denarius always talks to me. Well at least twice so far.

 

Thats a great find Tif

 

@ancient coin hunter, that Balbinus really does have chubby cheeks! It looks like he's playing the tuba

@Ryro, I love that Katane and have been attracted to such listings many times. One of these days...

@Deacon Ray, that is such an expressive portrait of Domna. She looks world-weary.

@dougsmit, nice assortment. I'll take that sestertius

@Severus Alexander, the rendering of the emperor's clothing is particularly artistic.

@TypeCoin971793, that really is a gorgeous 1 cent! Great eye appeal. The gold inlaid key coin is obviously very special.

@Sallent, thanks!

@David Atherton, one Venus-from-behind is not going to be enough. I also want one of Domitia because the Domitian-in-drag portraits of Domitia are interesting and the rendering of Venus is so different.

@panzerman, good luck with your next target

@Marsyas Mike, what a nice swath of time you've represented with that type!

Are you implying that you are a drunk monkey ? Beautiful coin, Chris. Here's to hoping the next images will by shot by a sober monkey?

@Jay GT4, nice one . Those Flavians sure seemed attracted to Venus.

@H8_modern, I feel the same way about the type. The one I have was purchased during a live online auction. I was watching and waiting for a particular target when it hit the virtual block. I hadn't seen or marked this coin for bidding but was immediately attracted to it and hit bid before my brain even knew what my finger was doing (or at least that's what I think happened... I really don't remember even bidding on it! The coin simply appeared in my invoice and it looks like I really did bid). Anepigraphic and minimally epigraphic coins always appeal to me.


Roman Republic, Anonymous
Rome, 115-114 BCE
AR denarius, 20 mm, 3.91 g, 10 h
Obv: Helmeted head of Roma right, X behind, ROMA below
Rev: Roma, helmeted, seated on two shields, holding spear before her, she-wolf standing right at her feet, head turned back, sucking Romulus and Remus. In left and right fields, two birds flying towards her.
Ref: Crawford 287/1

 

TIF, awesome new coin and a super nice Venus, congrats.
This one spoke to me years ago.
Doug

 

An interesting thread. As I buy coins for my collection purely by emotion (these days anyway), many fall into this category and as there are so many I can only post a few here. When to buy is easy, when you have the money. When to back off, well, for me its about whether or not I feel I will find another that will elicit the same feelings as the one I am currently viewing.

Caracalla AE29 of Tarsus in Cilicia:
When I first saw this coin I simply fell in love with it. I had never seen anything like it before with Artemis in the act of killing the deer. It is an incredibly dramatic coin and I have only seen one other example in the 25 years since I have owned it.

Gordian III AE35 of Antioch in Pisidia.

I bought this from Tom Cederlind a few years back. I loved the medallic flan, the smooth patina and the reverse type. He had not researched it yet but knew it was rare and asked a huge price, one of which he was shocked that I paid. Turns out the be much rarer that both of us suspected.

Faustina Sr. As.

This came to CNG after Tom Cederlind passed away (he bought it from them just a few months before he died). Not the greatest flan in the world but a lovely portrait and patina.

Vespasian Hexachalkon of Antioch in Seleucis & Pieria.

I had never seen this type before and with the crazy turreted hat on Tyche I knew I had to have it. Right after I bought this I noticed 2 or 3 more offered, I assume they came from the same group.

Vespasian Sestertius.



Whats not to love about this coin? A large flan, pretty good legends and a wonderful patina with a nice reverse type.

Lucius Verus AE19 of Coela in Thrace.


A neat type, not great legends but but an interesting and unpublished example. The dolphins swimming on the prow are what got me.

Athenian tetradrachm.



Anyone can have these, from crummy to mint state. But I liked the test cut, which had nearly cut the coin in half. When I got it the pieces were movable, almost making Athena 'speak' if moving the halves up and down. It since came in two pieces, but a little Elmers glue has held it in place for now.

There are more, many more!

 

That is a fact! One benefit of participating in a coin gabfest like CT is seeing which coins appealed to someone else. Sometimes it is obvious; sometimes not. That is why I enjoy most the posts that spend less time copying online catalog entries and more in the words of the collector explaining the why that coin spoke in a shout.

My coins may not be a close match but align with yours rather well on a one on one basis.

I always wanted a Caracalla from the time of his massacre in Alexandria. This LKB drachm is as close as I have found. I would like it better with an appropriately violent reverse but, when it comes to Alexandrian coins of Caracalla, you take what you can get.


My Gordian III as is smaller and less beautiful than your wonderful Antioch but it shouted loudly because of the Anonymous follis struck over it almost 800 years later. It is my favorite coin purchases since Y2K.


My Faustina (OK, I know it is Junior) offering is no beauty but I could not pass up a barbarous sestertius this bad. I have not seen that many barbarous sestertii.


I'm skipping the turret because none I have spoke up enough to earn this spot. Is it me or does Tyche look a lot like Vespasian?

Well I suppose we could say because it is yours and not mine but that would seem petty. I like mine, too, but yours is prettier.


For your tiny dolphins coin I'll show an Aurelian with a tiny dolphin in exergue. When it comes to tiny dolphin coins, we may have the tiniest???


Finally, I show a test cut so complete that no amount of Elmers could help it even if I did have the other half. I have other half coins but this one being fourree makes the added view really special.


The point here is that our coins can be special for any reason that makes sense to us even if we are the only ones to whom there is any sense to be made. Did I mention, I like each and every one of your speaking selections but I would have to single out that Tyche not so much for the hat but for the jowls.

 

@dlhill132, I love the hairstyle on that Julia Titi, particularly the well-preserved details of her plait and queue. The depiction of these reportedly beautiful Flavian empresses with their seemingly bewigged husbands' portraits seems baffling and hilarious to us (or at least to me). I'd love to know why they were depicted that way. Was it akin to keeping the woman's beauty private, as with some modern cultures whose adult females wear head coverings and veils? Was it considered an honor, showing the empress with physical characteristics of her powerful husband, elevating the emperor at the same time by showing he consorts with a powerful woman? Something else altogether?

If someone on CT manages to build a time machine and goes back to the Flavian era, please remember to ask someone about this for me .

@Ken Dorney, I love your answer and all of those coins, especially the Tarsus Caracalla, the puppet Athena, and the Vespasian hexachalkon. The latter is especially fascinating. Tyche's portrait looks more Vespasiany than Vespasian's portrait. If you ever tire of this coin.... dibs .

 

And you got a fantastic coin, so quit yer whinin' .

(I'm just jealous)

I'm gonna call dibs on this one too . Absolutely amazing. What a find!

 

Nice that you both noticed this interesting aspect. Its another reason I bought the coin, and I have a couple others with similar themes:

Here is Hadrian as Mercury:


And here is Pius as Mars:

 

Yeah, I'm going to pre-order those too .

What an interesting group of emperor-as-deity coins!

Commodus as Hercules comes to mind as another type. Who else here can show another example of this visual play?

 

Doug generously donated this OP coin type to my Roman coin class project. It about broke my heart to give it to a student since I don’t have this type.

Seriously, I’m eager to see how the student researches and writes up this coin. Doug also donated a Septimius Severus denarius that I’m going to use as a prize for the best presentation.

 

Couldn't resist a chance to show some similar reverses to that beauty TIF showed (others have shown as well):

This Domna was attributed to Emesa when I bought it, though that is up for grabs now that the BM has gone over to Antioch ad Orontes for all those. the reverse has a legend with a shorter first word and longer second word than the OP coin VENER VICTOR, but Venus and her palm are the same:

and here is a similar reverse type on a rather clear Salonina, but with the inscription VENVS VICTRIX:


Not the first time you've seen them, of course.

 

I have never had a second chance opportunity to purchase a coin, as TIF describes.
However, there are many coins in my collection that I puchased because they 'spoke to me, strongly'.

These are two examples. The first one is a sestertius of Lucius Verus with a portrait that I will modestly describe as 'majestic', 'imperial'. I bought it partly because I think it portrays Verus like he probably truly was - courageous and righteous, and not the weak, self indulging, decadent, luxury-prone individual which history portrays. This portrait does the emperor justice:

The second one is an as of Nero which I had to have for similar reasons: a dignified portrait of an emperor who is also often maligned in history books, but who may have in fact been different from what history portrays.



Yes, there are many coins which 'spoke to me' for particular reasons which have found their way to my collection over the years. I guess I am a somewhat sentimental individual who finds pleasure in coins which evoke emotional feelings in me. My wife does not have time for such 'sentimentalities', she says, specially when they cost money...and tells me that when a coin speaks to me so strongly in future, I should just wear ear-plugs.

 

You know you should buy the coin when...

... ten or twenty years later you still look at it so tenderly that you would buy it again.

Apart from themed collections leading to search for specific coins, as a generalist I tend to buy only coins that speak to me, hence I would be hard pressed finding just one. Anyway @TIF, I had a second chance on one of the coins you like the most in my collection : the Domitius Domitianus octadrachm !

I hesitated bidding on it when it came up at auction because of a starting price I wasn't comfortable with, and it apparently remained unsold. One year later or so, it came up again at the same auction house and I was still hesitating but timidly bid 1 franc over starting price (1 franc was 15 cents back then). It must have been my lucky day as I got it at my bid, meaning there was another bidder at the starting price !!!


Domitius Domitianus, Octadrachm, Emmet plate coin - Alexandria mint, AD 296-297
ΔOMITI-ANOC CEB, Radiate bust of Domitius right
No legend, Serapis going right, LB in field (regnal year 2)
12.79 gr
Ref : Emmett, Alexandrian coins #4241/2, this example illustrated, Dattari # 10830, RCV # 12982 (2000), Sear # 4801 var (It's actually an hexadrachm in Sear)
Domitius Domitianus, stationed in Egypt, rebelled against Diocletianus in july 296 AD and was proclaimed emperor. He was defeated during spring 297 AD. Diocletian decided to close the alexandrian mint, so the coins of Domitianus are the last provincial coins from Alexandria. Also, Domitianus was the only ruler to strike octadrachms (in parallel with didrachms, tetradrachms and hexadrachms)

Also, the following comment, about another specimen sold at CNG (Triton XI, Lot # 539) "For the most part, scholars agree that the larger coins featuring the radiate bust must be a double, and thereby call it an octodrachm. At half the weight, then, the smallest coins with the Nike on the reverse must be tetradrachms, though these coins have erroneously been called heretofore didrachms. The weights of these tetradrachms appear consistent with the final issues of pre-reform tetradrachms of the Tetrarchs. The middle denomination poses the largest challenge to this arrangement. By weight, it should be a hexadrachm. However, no such denomination was known to have been struck in Egypt, though tetradrachms earlier in the third century achieved this weight. The obvious problem here would be the confusion caused in circulating the same denomination in two different weights. As this type is the rarest of the group, it is possible that it was meant for a special occasion, or more remotely, a stalled attempt to reinstitute the pre-reform coinage on an earlier weight standard. Further investigation may shed more light on this subject.

Q

 

Coins with venus on revers are just amazing. Such a beautiful representation !

 

This is the only denarius in my collection portraying Venus standing:

 

My dilemna is that every day of the year, I cannot resist going on sixbid site. Once there, I have thousands of homeless beauties that are crying out to me. Alas, I have to confess that I am usually flat broke and have to find the $ to be able to purchase a few of these, and give them a new home. October seems to be the worst month, you have the Kunker/ Maison Palombo/ Morton&Eden/ Sincona auctions. There is a certain Aureus that is crying out the loudest May have to collect some lawn debts earlier then planned to pay for it.....hopefully this coin will not attract some rich collectors attention!

 

Wow! That would have been hard for me to give away. Kudos to Doug for letting go of a such a nice coin.

Her hairstyle is subtly different, or is that from a die break? If so, it's too bad she didn't see this coin and have her stylist reproduce the look. It's much softer and prettier than her Basket Head look.

Those adjectives seem quite appropriate. Gorgeous coin, and I agree with you about history's treatment of both LV and Nero.

That coin makes me happy and sad all at the same time. Happy that it exists, happy that you have it and love it, sad that it is not mine.

Beautiful!

 

You know when you have a nice modern when even @TIF likes it.