You can probably guess that the left quadrans was minted later than the right one. both are anonymous with symbols: elephant and staff. some details on the coins: elephant series quadrans Roman Republic, Struck Bronze, Anonymous series with elephant's head. AE Quadrans, 128 BC. The moneyer is probably a Metellus who is remembering L.Caecilius Metellus, Cos. 251, who captured Hasdrubal's (of Carthage) elephants in 250 BC. Obv - Head of Hercules right; behind, three pellets. Rev - Prow right; above, elephant's head right and before three pellets. Below, ROMA. VF 3.24 grams 17.0 mm Cr. 262/4 B.41. The staff series quadrans is struck over an earlier & larger Roma / Prow uncia. I have two sets of pics below to show rotation of the over and under types. Roman Republic, Staff series. AE Quadrans, c. 208 BC, Central Italy. Obv - Head of Hercules right, wearing lion's skin; behind, three pellets. Rev - Prow of galley right; ROMA (with archeic A) and staff (the line above the deck and to right of small box on deck) above; three (more like 2 and a half) dots below Traces of double striking. The under type is an earlier semilibral uncia, Cr-38/6. Crawford lists over strikes and lists this type as #99 on pg 116. He notes three examples of this type. About VF, Dark patina, Very rare (seller’s words). I found a few examples of the staff quadrans, but no over strikes. Note that there are two staff series RR bronze coins. the description below is from an NAC auction in 2011. My coin looks like a similar reverse. 11.2 grams 25.1 – 25.9 mm Cr. 106/7a over type / Cr. 38/6 under type Rev. ROMA Prow r.; above, staff and below, three pellets. Sydenham –. Crawford –. Very rare. Delightful light green tone and about extremely fine We have attributed this quadrans to the staff series, since two lines can be seen on either side of the flat-roofed deckhouse (corvo), which we interpret as a staff placed in an atypical position. The style is completely different from the two preceding specimens, yet typical of central Italian coins. Moreover, there are at least four completely distinct styles known to recur on all denominations of the staff series.
Great coins. Do you have any links to further information regarding the various 'series' of quadrantes from the Republic? I did briefly look a few weeks ago and struggled to find anything substantial.
@rrdenarius you are a lucky guy. I had intended to bid on that overstrike but forgot to enter my bid before bedtime the night before the auction! It's a great coin.
I dont see an elephant's head on the small quadrans , more like a complete elephant going left ? Here's a similar one with a donkey on deck. Here's my other one, overstrike too ??
i bought three ancient chinese coins dao bi from private auction and when i cleaned them i was kinda shocked.please give ur suggestions
I do not have a list of RR coins by symbol. About 211 BC Rome introduced a new series of silver coins. Each year a set of three moneyers would oversee coin production. They had gold (not a lot), silver (denarius, quinarius & Sestertius) & bronze. At first the were anonymous, but identifying marks or letters were soon placed on the coins by the moneyers. You can look in books like Sear or Crawford for a list of all coins and by date and see the list of die symbols. A web link with coins by Crawford numbers is here: http://davy.potdevin.free.fr/Site/crawford1.html Note that there are many coins in the RR series. Crawford numbers go to 550, and the number of types is several times that.
