My first coin of 2019: another anonymous quinarius

Thank you , that makes it a lot easier to understand.

 

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I think this guide is well written and very valuable. As collectors of ancients, only a subset of our coins have dates and/or mintmarks on them allowing us to fully attribute them from simply looking at the coin. On top of that, we have almost no mint records and in cases like the anonymous Roman Republican issues we have a large corpus of coins whose descriptions are essentially the same: "Roma/Dioscuri".

One could decide that a basic attribution like that is sufficient and some collectors and dealers are content with that(as you seem to be), but many of us want to know even more about our coins and this is where having literature like this available is so important. Thousands of pages of find information, die studies and stylistic observations have been distilled into a single page that can be referenced quickly and easily to find such information as what mint a Denarius with a single large spike or horn on the back of the helmet is from(in this particular case with the spike, a Sicilian mint).

A secondary benefit that I think many people miss when reading a guide like this or the similar guides to Victoriati and anonymous bronzes that other authors have put out is that they give us a single, central jargon that can be used when discussing and describing these coins. That in itself is an immense aid when communicating about them with other collectors, particularly when describing new varieties or attempting to confirm attributions.

 

'Twas I that attempted to bid, but failed. I had not used this particular live bidding platform in some time, and this was my first target (for all the reasons that @red_spork eloquently mentioned). Auctioneer announced the lot and the low opening bid; I pressed and held the bid button, but I must have held it too long, because my tablet thought I was trying to launch an application; I pressed again and again, but by then it was too late and @red_spork had won it. My morale was crushed. Fortunately, I sorted out my bid button issues before my major target hit the block. I won that one!

@red_spork mentioned the "ski slope nose" as an identifier of this series. I find the unbound, scraggly hair more easy to spot. I take solace that I already have the type, but felt @red_spork 's coin would have been a moderate upgrade. My current example below:

 

Perhaps I am more inclined to simple language, and everyday phrases. To me the wording was highly technical and complicated. However, others may find such writings very beneficial, and useful in learning both theory and practise of some areas of numismatics. However, I do still feel that such writings are unsuitable for the general public, and more for higher levels of academia.