Just picked this up in an auction today: Lot 135. SASANIAN KINGS. Ardashir I. 224-240 AD. AR Drachm (4.40 gm; 27 mm). Mint C (Ctesiphon). Diademed bust of Ardashir I right, wearing close-fitting headdress lacking earflaps and with korymbos / Fire altar with diadems; no attendants. Large dot (pellet) on reverse at the rim at 12. Göbl type III/2/2; Paruck 34; cf. Saeedi 25-6; Sunrise 713. Overstruck on an earlier coin. Choice EF / Superb EF. Lightly toned. I have others of his, but liked this one. It reminds me the coinage situation when Ardashir took power. He was in a rush to get his new dynasty depicted on coins, and didn't have a lot of unstruck silver laying around. To alleviate this, they took Parthian and Roman silver coins, flattened them to wipe out the previous coin, and restruck them. This created a wider, thinner coin. This actually became the model for coinage for over 1000 years in this area of the world, all due to Ardashir wanting to rush out new coinage proclaiming his new dynasty. One of these days I will figure out the undertype maybe. If anyone has an idea, I would love to hear it.
The coin is very round for a hammered flat recycle and 4.4g is a lot for silver coins from the early part of his reign except for Roman ants which I would expect to be lower grade silver. Are you sure it is not doublestruck or a diebreak? Mine is available for comparison. Subtract what is on both coins and see what is left.
Could have been struck over another Ardashir coin. Not saying that. It is just having an Ardashir overstruck to me is cool, as it reminds me of how many early coins were overstruck on others, and that is how the wide, flat coins common from 230 to 1800 were created. I was thinking the piece to the left of the portrait looked like it could come from another Ardashir issue. What do you see?
Very nice! I have an Ardashir I drachm that has a similar unusual artefact in the field; I thought it might be the traces of an undertype (extending from his nose), but then again the Ardashir drachms were the first coin of their type minted anywhere in the world, so how would they overstrike an existing coin? I would assume that all of his coins would have been struck on freshly prepared silver, rather than struck over flattened Parthian drachms or Roman antoninianii.
I just got the coin in hand last night. Wow. I have to say even better in hand. reverse is as struck from a fresh die. Very nice quality. I just wish I could figure out the undertype.
Do you have a better image of this? I have some concern on this coin, the uneven surface could be result of metal melting which means could be a cast. Also I can't see much traces of patina or cleaning evidence on it so a more close up and detail image of this coin would help to see if it is genuine or not. One other concern is wrong wear. I can see parts of characters on obverse are worn while other characters are not. In original coins the wear should be consistent . I magnified the section that shows the wrong wear pattern.
