Featured Roman Coins HOARD

These showed up at an ANA show a few years back.

 

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I had to hold @lordmarcovan at gunpoint lol he has first right of refusal if I ever part with it (though this one is likely to be a forever hold for me)

 

I'm a dummy, I should have bought the whole hoard. Only purchased 40, but I was able to pick what I felt were the best and encouraged others to stop by the dealers table; after I was done.

That being said, I had other very good purchases.

 

I feel a pinch of jealousy.

 

Thanks to Donna L for the info regarding the London Coin Club publication.

 

Is the 83,000 coins just a breakdown by mint, or has a detailed listing of individual coins/types been published yet?

 

There was website dedicated to the hoard, but I can't access it...
http://www.misurata.unict.it/

Here's a screen shot of it:



And this reference could maybe help you:
GARRAFFO, S., (1992) Le monete,Quaderni di archeologia della Libya, 15, p. 31-133.

 

Thanks ... Unfortunately I can't access it either, at least at the moment. It says server not found. Google doesn't appear to know about it either.

Has the website been active recently? I take it it had a listing of all the coins?

I've googled for information on this hoard a number of times, and there are a few short papers on acedemia.edu by Garraffo, but I've never seen reference to a detailed inventory, either online or in print.

 

ignore

 

No, it never had the coins listed. A couple years ago, it had a membership option and I signed up; but heard back that the site was not active.

 

Thanks, Victor.

At this point, 40 years after discovery, it doesn't seem they are very keen to publish it. I wonder if the hoard itself is still intact...

 

Is that bronze or silver?

 

That book looks interesting.
I am mostly interested in silver and gold roman coins - does it have much about those?

 

There are about 30 hoards of gold coins only and maybe 50 of gold and silver.

Also interesting (to me at least) more than 2 dozen hoards with coins of only one emperor.

 

I only have one coin from a famous hoard, and it's this interesting antoninianus of Probus, TEMPR FELICI (SIC!) reverse



It's from the Linchmere Hoard, found in 1924

 

I've tried contacting Sig. Garraffo on academia.edu about the inventory catalog, but no response so far. The lastest update seems to be his 2016 report you quote from which has 83,000 (out of 108,000 total) coins individually attributed and entered into a computer database (by the Italian team doing this work) ... with this information being withheld from public access due to permission not having been given by the Libyan government.

It's a real shame if this data never sees the light of day, since it contains an unprecedented number of coins from the Rome mint both prior to Constantine's taking control in c.313AD and after. A full 10% of the attributed coins (8,607 out of 82,713) are from the Rome mint from the Constantinian period 313-318 AD.

All we have in terms of information on individual coins from the hoard are maybe a dozen "rare or unlisted" coins, and a sampler of a couple dozen more common ones. Unfortunately we don't know how complete this published group of unlisted coins is meant to be, nor how good the researchers were in identifying rare/noteworthy Constantinian types.

From what's been published, what's noteworthy is how *few* unlisted/rare Constantinian reverse types were among the 8,607 Rome mint coins from the 313-318 AD time period. From the "RP" issue of 313 AD there are at least 7 known victory-celebration reverse types (3 unlisted), none of which have been reported from Misurata. From the following "R*P" issue there are 3 reverse types, all unlisted, of which MIsurata only reports two specimens of the "LIBERATOR ORBIS" type, which isn't even that rare (I've recorded over 20 specimens).

Hopefully the researchers were just kidding with the picture below, but it's rather disconcerting that the detailed catalog is being deliberately withheld.