I just bought this denarius of Septimius Severus on a small flan, because I searched acsearch before that and look like this variant was made only on this way? Why are the small flans and the weight remained the same (thickness of the coin is 2.5-3 mm)? Septimius Severus. A.D. 193-211. AR denarius (15.5 mm, 3.06 g). Rome mint, A.D. 194-195. Ob. L SEPT SEV PERT AVG IMP VIIII, laureate head right. Rev. PM TR P V COS II PP, Genius standing left, holding patera and grain ears, altar left. RIC 105. Also, I have another Septimius denarius on small flan from earlier. Post your 'small flan' Septimius denarii or some generally accepted explanation. Thanks.
That one's small, even by Severan standards. The majority of Severan denarii are in the 17.5 mm - 20 mm range. Here's my smallest, a mere 16.7 mm measured from 9:00 to 3:00 on the obverse (which is how I measure all of my coins): Julia Domna, AD 193-211. Roman AR denarius, 2.44 g, 16.7 mm, 5 h. Rome, AD 197, issue 13. Obv: IVLIA AVGVSTA, bare-headed and draped bust right. Rev: VESTAE SANCTAE, Vesta standing left, holding patera and scepter. Refs: RIC 587; Hill 254; CRE 418; Cohen 246; RCV --.
IMP VII through to IMP X seems to have been focussing on production volume rather than production quality. As such the quality control on the flans decreased and thus the quality of the output leading to lots of small flan coins:-
I don't have 'generally accepted explanations' for things not recorded in history but there are facts. Some of the earliest denarii of Septimius were well made on decent flans. Things fell off while Septimius was in the East fighting Pescennius, Albinus and the Parthians. When he returned to Rome, the coins were not the best. After a point, the quality control returned to a higher level than had been seen for years. Who was responsible for such matters while the emperor was away? The bad period pretty much lines up with the time of greatest influence of Plautinian who was later executed as a traitor and was not ever fully loyal to Septimius. His daughter Plautilla was exiled and he was killed. Did he cause the mint problems with his appointments or did he clean it up? IDK https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plautian It is wholly inappropriate to talk about the coinage of an emperor as if it were one consistent unit. Septimius had several mints and reigned for several years. There was a period roughly 195-204 where the Rome mint did some (but not entirely) poor work. There are decent coins from this period but you have to look harder. Don't buy the first coin you see or buy them to illustrate the point that management at the mint went through a careless period. Decent but not exceptional examples: 193 AD 194 AD 197 AD 202 AD 209 AD
As far as I can tell, this could be anything from IMP V to VIII (195-7). I pretend it's VI. It celebrates the victory over Niger & the subsequent push into Osroene.
OK, all those who got this 'joke' hold up your hand. RSC lists this coin as the only one that comes in VI but that listing is copied from the Reka Devnia hoard which did not illustrate the coin and, as far as I know, recent scholars have not had access to the coins in Bulgaria to confirm the reading. There have been other coins listed as IMP VI but they turned out to be misreadings caused by the small flans and poor workmanship. I, personally, doubt that the RD coin (or any other coin) actually reads VI and also doubt that we will ever see any of the RD coins published or photographed again. I have to wonder how many of the 80,000 coins are still in their vaults. This Laodicea denarius clearly reads IMP VI but the die is a duplicate of another coin (below) that is IMP VIII. We have to read with care and take care not to believe everything we read. VI VI-II with the last II on the other side of the bust point.
My preference is to give the largest and smallest "diameters" to the nearest mm. If I say a coin is "21-19 mm," you know it is slightly out of round and you can easily tell its size and the scale of its photograph. If I say "22 mm" you know it is close to round and close to 22 mm in any direction. More accuracy than 1 mm is unnecessary. If one picks a particular orientation to measure "diameter" you could have 19 mm and 21 mm coins on exactly the same size flans (just rotated 90 degrees).
I figured at least you and @maridvnvm would get it. I hope you got a chuckle. (Although you've put "joke" in scare quotes. Hmmm, that's not a good sign...) In any case, thanks for the further detail, I didn't realize the RD horde was inaccessible. What a shame. That is a truly awesome pair of coins. A coin nerd's dream!
That's a very reasonable method; it's just for a different purpose than mine. My purpose when cataloging coins is to identify the coin as mine in particular. The combination of diameter measured in a standard fashion plus weight helps to establish ownership, even in the absence of a photograph of the coin.
