Hi all! Some new purchases arrived today! I bought two lots from eBay, and they were all surprisingly cheap - especially the second one! The first lot set me back a total of just under £70 ($98USD) - which is actually quite a decent amount of money for me. They were sold in 4 separate groups from the same seller, and I bought all of them A nicely silvered coin of Constantine This other Constantine where he looks very smug about something This decent coin of Constantius A nice silver/billon ORIENS AVGG coin of Gallienus A nice antoninianus of Probus A small silver coin with Nike/Victory reverse (if anyone know what this is, please do let me know lol) A silver antoninianus of Trajan Decius, VBERITAS AVG reverse (there was also a chunky provincial coin of Trajan Decius which I couldn't upload due to 10 picture limit) A silver antoninianus of Valerian I, SALVS AVG reverse This one is what drew me to the lots initially - a chunky (and surprisingly good condition) tetradrachm of Nero, Serapis reverse. I don't collect these, but this one is so cool, I might keep for myself lol And these other 15 miscellaneous coins. The tetradrachm's pretty cool, and if anyone has an ID, please let me know Will post the other coins in my next comment, as there are too many photos.
The next coins were from 2 lots from the same seller. I managed to get all 10 of the Gallienus zoo coins for £22, and the 5 Quintillus coins for £20 They're all pretty common, with some duplicates, but most of them are in pretty great shape Antelope Double-struck doe Goat (facing left) Goat (facing right) Hippocamp Pegasus Actually one of the Gallienus' was a Salonina And the 5 Quintillus coins! I'll definitely have to start a new sub collection of zoo series coins lol
The Victory small coin seems to be from Caesarea, Cappadocia. I see no legend on the reverse and ΚΑΙϹΑΡ on the obverse. Not sure about the ruler though.
They're crowns. These coins are antoninianus coins (a two denarius piece), and all the emperors depicted on them wear 'radiate crowns'
As an aside, most imperial coins with radiate crowns are double denominations: double Asses are radiate dupindii, double Sestertii are radiate, and double aurei are as well. Lots of exceptions but a general rule
The small silver Nike is probably a hemidrachm of Vespasian https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=1657943
Middle bottom row is Aurelian from Alexandria, year four. Mine is a bit nicer but cost $54 in 2016 largely because Aurelian coins of Alexandria are notoriously hard to read. You can compare letter for letter. AK Λ ΔOM AVPHΛIANOC CEB The reverse is the L symbol for year and Δ for 4. I'd guess that these coins were carefully selected by their owner quite a while ago when such things could be pulled from pickout pots for less than a dollar. The selections show someone cared but probably had no money for really nice coins. You did well for the money but the educational value of this group is many times its cash value.