Its been pretty boring these past few weeks, at least for ancient coins. So I figured I'd post some of my new purchases. The Hunnic piece was from New York, the Celtic I got online. I've really gotten interested in these non-Classical coins lately. Anyone else have new stuff? Celtic Gaul – The Remi Potin unit c. 100-50 BC Figure with plait running right, holding torc and spear Beast standing right, with mouth open; object in shape of fibula above, serpent(?) below D&T 155; Depeyrot, NC VII, 29; CCCBM III 483 Nezak Huns AE Drachm Kabul mint, c. 600-700 AD In Pahlavi, NPKY MLK to right, A behind Bust r. with winged bull’s head crown Fire altar with attendants; wheel symbols in fields above, control marks in outer fields Göbl, "Dokumente" Em. 198/34; cf. MACW 1510
Congrats. Nice and interesing coins. I have a Hun coin like that myself. May I ask what you gave for it? Here are some of my new old coins:
Nice denarii! I have yet to bother getting a Julius Caesar myself. The Celtic piece cost me $25, the Hunnic $30.
Great coins! I'd be posting some by now i'm sure had it not been for the snow I particularly like that celtic one and the as of Agrippa, all are nice though.
You can certainly see the Sassanian influence in the Hunnic coin...great coins BTW, love the Romans, the Aurelius has a stunning portrait, they all do to be honest.
oh, these are probably my latest ancients to be put online but ATM I have a backlog... Imp Julian Imp Volusian
the celtic is my fav and i thought gun money was cool . nice pick ups .and thanks for shareing them. ok i have some older than the gun money,, but not as old as that. dave
heres one I'm getting from Doug (picture is his ) I'm guessing its at the post office right now here in town waiting for me to shovel it out. I think I got this right. Commodus Denarius M COMM ANT P FEL AVG BRIT, laureate head right ROMAE AETERNAE, Roma seated left holding Victory and scepter, C V P P in ex. RIC 195, RSC 647, BMC 239
today I got three today from India ($38 total) but most interesting to me was this Delhi Raja Ananga 1130-1145 AD (Tye AWC 813) that shows legend right of the horse. The photo shows off to poor advantage the very base billon of the coin. I'd guess it is 20% silver? So far 2010 has provided me with 6 coins. Five were bull/horsemen Jitals (a current obsession) so I'll add the other - a Peroz Sasanian (Kirman mint). In the last year I have really cut back on Classical and started exploring things I never studied before. Many of them are relatively ugly or crude and they all seem to use an alphabet that I have to term 'squiggles'. After a few months a few letters are starting to sink in but Asian coins really make Greek look easy to read.
Lots of great new old coins here. Congratulations to all of you who had the pleasure of adding a new coin to your collection. Doug Smith, I have moved in the opposite direction from you I used to pick up all kind of ancient or medieval coins, and have a collection that goes in all directions. I have been wanting to do something about that, so at the moment I'm just working on my set of emperors, and Republican denarii from Sulla to Augustus. I'm also tired of having a huge collection in low quality, so I have gotten rid of a lot of coins, and am going for quality at the moment. Ardatirion, here is my Hunic coin. I bought this from Alan Van Arsdale, and I have his ID on it. Don't know much about the piece myself. It looks very much like yours, though some differences. Do you know any good online resource for this kind of coins?
For this type coin alway try: http://www.grifterrec.com/coins/huns/huns.html There have been a lot of these AE coins offered lately and most seem to have pretty green patinas suggesting a single large find. Also seen but less frequently are the same designs in rather poor billon silver. The examples shown above by others are very nice compared to many especially when it comes to the reverse. The one I have was seriously double struck on the reverse. Some are just an illegible mess hardly identifiable as Sasanian fire altar copies. If you are planning to buy one, try to get a nice clear bull head over the portrait. Since others have shown the nice bronzes I'll show a trashy billon with next to no reverse.
One of the wonderful things about collecing coins is that there are as many possibilities for collecting as there are collectors. Unfortunately many people seem obcessed with 'quality' which means they can not collect many very interesting coins simply because they do not come in acceptable quality. Those forming a perfect one-per-emperor collection will have a problem finding matching Pescennius Niger or Regalianus coins (and a dozen others) simply becauses the best known ones are not proofs. I encourage each person to collect what appeals most and to avoid putting down other views as 'wrong'. A 'quality' collection does not have to be entirely slabbed proofs.
That link is great! How can one not appreciate a site with this kind of statement?!? "This page is about the Hephthalites (and peoples confused with the Hephthalites). Or the Ephthalites or Epthalites or Hephtal or Hunas or White Huns or Hayathelites or Ye-tai or He-ta or Cao, depending what circles you crawl in. The Hephthalites, as everybody knows, were bloodthirsty gangs of cone-headed, polyandric, Buddhist-hating, sun-worshiping maniacs.*"
Somewhere I recall reading that written history of the Hepthalites was limited since they didn't write and had a policy of killing outsiders in their territory so few stories about them made it back to civilization. A lot of what we know about several groups is based on some statement about someone sending/demanding something to someone in China and transliterating a name not written but passing through stories in three languages none of which used an alphabet we could understand doesn't make it any easier.
Thank you all for sharing your new additions. Even though I can't figure out what is supposed to be on some of them, I still enjoy seeing them.
One real difference between Greek/Roman and Eastern coins is the latter's tendency to take a previous coin type and copy/adapt/develop it for their own purposes. As a result we see copies of copies of copies with the last looking little like the original but striking the users as OK for being a coin. Athens did this to a small degree with the owls; Persian running kings did, too. Neither series lasted long enough to get really wild. I am amazed after collecting these for a rather short while how the similarities start to seem more clear. The Chaulukyas silver below (c.1000 AD) is a copy of a copy of a copy of the (457-483 AD) Peroz Sasanian type with fire altar that I showed earlier having passed through intermediate stops like the Hephthalites we've seen in this thread. Easily half of the ones shown on eBay are shown other than right side up. Is my reverse right or wrong? Looking at the coin, the altar is there if you want to find it bad enough but I'm not sure exactly how numismatists traced it along the way. To collectors of fine Greek art, even Peroz is a bit wild style. It copied the earlier Sasanian fire altar with attendants like this Shapur I (the guy who captured Valerian I) two centuries earlier. If you see any pattern over these 750 years of development, you might be a potential collector of Central Asian coins. Interestingly, all three of these coins weigh between 3.7 and 3.9 grams. The type was a sign of spendable money.
Your posts are always great, Doug. I think I can see an alter there...maybe? It's one of those things, I think, that you can find it easier if you know what to look for...like a needle in a haystack, I suppose. Before I read it was an alter, it just looked like lines and dots...but I can kind of see how it could be a structure, like the altar. When I look at the very first coin in this thread, Ardatirion's Celtic coin, I can see that the side on the left, (obverse?) shows a human form...but the other side, I just don't see it. It looks like a freeform design to me!
