Thought I'd share my latest acquisition, taken with a brand new lens. I'm super excited about the coin, though I do understand that attributions change. My goal was to collect something from Antigonos I Monophthalmos, and it seemed logical to pick something up from when he had proclaimed himself king from 305-301 BCE. When I learned that he built his own capital called Antigoneia, and that Antigoneia minted coins, I zero'd in on that. Luckily, I located this one at a good price. While not unique, the type seems to be very rare. There are no examples of Price 3195 on Pella or on the British Museum's site (which confuses me, since how would Price have otherwise cataloged it?) I did find one other copy on acsearch, so there's at least two (but probably more) out there. The lens is the brand new Canon RF 100 macro. I just received it today, and the very first time I used it was for this coin. So far, compared to the previous 100L macro, I have to say the image stabilization is amazing. I didn't really buy the lens for coins, but it makes the job super easy.
The reverse seems sharper than the obverse. I did not get a new lens today so I'll fall back on the 100mm Macro Yashinon lens I used with my Contax 137 back in the 1980's. It served me until I went digital and shot most of the coin images I posted online before 2000. The adapter used here is cobbled together from old extension tubes and the Canon EF-RF adapter fitting on my RP. This image of a Caracalla sestertius is about 3x size uncropped but reduced to fit here. It used a stack of tubes of three different mounts AKA what I have at hand today. I do not have a lens that offers more than 1:1 but you can always add extension tubes. Below is cropped but not reduced of the same original. Caracalla has waxy residue in his eye. This image shows the rig I used then. I do not miss film but the images then were better than the first couple digital cameras I bought. The wood frame allowed a lot of freedom in arranging the lights but five incandescent bulbs made a lot of heat.
Yes, I noticed that too. Interestingly, its twin that I found on acsearch has the same funky soft obverse and oval reverse. I'm still a beginner at dies, but to me it looks like a double die match. I did read somewhere that the Antigoneia mint used very few dies, and wonder if all of Price 3195 was one die. For > 1x I used the MP-E 65. I have shot at high magnification with it hand held and stacked the photos with Serene stacker. The lens is crazy sharp. I also have a Stackshot rail I can use if I want to be more precise. One of these days I need to setup my > 5x setup. The Stackshot rail works fine for the camera, but the problem is specimen manipulation, since when you get to 10x and 20x you need to be extremely precise.
