I have been brought 6 more coins in the market for verification and possible purchase. All are outside my comfort zone, so I can I beg some assistance again? Fifth is unidentified. Weighs 16.06g and measures about 28mm across. Seems probably Roman and possibly Alexandrian mint, but can you do any better?
Could be Commodus indeed, three monetae. In the ex., it mentions 'MONAV[G]'. And on the obverse legend, I do believe I see PFELI... starting at 1 o'clock. See for example https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=5240408 The weight of your coin is quite low, though.
This is Rome mint not Alexandria. The cleaning job is not well done. I assume this is a detectorist find cleaned by the finder.
I have now bought this along with all the Ptolemy coins. I am not quite sure how to label this one - as it is so underweight and size for a Sestertius, is it possibly an As but not listed in Sear? Or is it just a copy - contemporary or later? Or is it listed somewhere else than Sear? Thanks for any help.
It's RIC 500 (Commodus) - http://numismatics.org/ocre/id/ric.3.com.500 OCRE is an online version of RIC (Roman Imperial Coinage) and far more comprehensive than Sear, so worth a try searching there! ATB, Aidan.
Thanks for that - a very useful link! I had got to pretty much this detail before, but I am still concerned about the weight. All the examples listed there are much heavier - some nearly double! Is this really within the expected range or is it a different coin?
I'd say it's the same coin - the weight of the bronze coins isn't well controlled, though your coin is certainly one of the lightest ones. There are a couple of ones on OCRE with weights of 17.42g & 17.508g, so it's not a million miles from them. if you look at the 9 examples listed with weights, the mean is about 22.02g and the standard deviation about 4.22g. You're less than 1.5 standard deviations from the mean and on the heavy side, there are examples listed which are even more outliers. The only other coin it could be is an as, which would be too heavy at 16g, so it's likely a light sestertius. ATB, Aidan.
At 28 mm plus a couple of mm struck off flan, the types are too large for an As but appropriate for a sestertius. Moreover this 3 Monetae type is well attested on sestertii, but is so far I think unknown on middle bronzes, that is asses or dupondii. Not impossible, of course, that such an As or dupondius might still turn up; but if so its diameter and type size will be smaller. So I would agree with Aidan: your coin is pretty surely an underweight sestertius.
