Curious to see what folks here think of this. It's a Carthaginian 1/4 Calco, attributed to Carthago Nova. These only show up in Spain, and after asking over at Forum I am told that they come in a 'fine' and 'crude' style, this one falling into the later category. There is at least one example of the fine style including a letter (an Ayin, so 'O'), as seen on some larger Carthaginian issues, beside the helmet. None of the crude types are recorded as having a letter. Yet looking at this one, I see a hint of something to the lower right of the helmet. It's definitely not corrosion, but it could just be a flaw in the die or a striking error. Yet whereas most of these in the crude style have a simple circular ring around them, this one seems to have something else there, and I wonder if it might be a letter or symbol?
Very cool @SeptimusT ! I enjoy collecting Carthage... I have a helmet version also: Carthage AE13, 2.12g 1/4 Calco 218-209 BCE Second Punic War Mint Traveling with Carthaginian / Barcid Army in Southern Celtiberia Tanit / Helmet (That would be Hannibal’s army...) Sorry, don’t have access to my SNG COP - North Africa plate book to help you out right now...
Some additional research has turned up what might be two other examples of the crude style with a letter or symbol in the lower right area of the coin. I don’t have full access to acsearch, so I can only see the smaller images of the coins. However, neither description makes any note of the letter. One was sold by London Ancient Coins, and has what might be a Punic shin: https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=2086314 The other was sold by Ibercoin. Their image is upside down and not very high quality so I can’t make out what it is, but it looks like something is there. https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=2062313 Any thoughts?
