Ancients => Post your Favourite coin and *Favourite tune*

I've spent hours trapped in YouTube, so I think I'll inflict some "Whipping Boy" on anyone who cares.

I never managed to get to see them - they played at least once in Cork when I was a postgrad and I couldn't convince anyone to spend the £7 admission I should have just gone myself - someone told me later it was the loudest gig he'd ever been to - so, turn it up to 11.

This is from a live TV show - Later With Jools Holland - Twinkle & We Don't Need Nobody Else. There's an official Twinkle video on YouTube, but the live version is good too. We Don't Need Nobody Else is great - at one time, there was an official video on YouTube, but it seems to have been removed.



Like Doug Smith, I got to my first coin show in ages recently - Coinex in London.
I hadn't been to Coinex before and it was smaller and a bit quieter than I'd expected, but it was a nice trip and I picked up a few books and coins:

RIC vol. X for £100 from Spink (normally £195), a book on coin cleaning, also on sale, and three RR denarii:



Here's one of them - my most expensive purchase of the day

Julius Caesar Denarius
Obv.: Head of Venus right, wearing diadem; behind, Cupid
Rev.: Trophy with oval shield and carnyx in each hand; on left, seated demale captive resting head in right hand; on right, beareded captive seated with hands tied behind back
Exergue: CAESAR
Mint: Spain (46-45 BC)
Wt./Size/Axis: 3.94g / 18mm / -
References:

• RSC 13
• Sydenham 1014
• Crawford 468/1
• HCRI 58
• RBW 1639

Acquisition: Silbury Coins Coinex 2021, London 25-Sep-2021




ATB,
Aidan.

P.S. Just joking, coin cleaners

 

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You got all 3 of those denarii and the book for £100??

I would’ve paid double! I wish I could find cheap denarii like that!.

I need Julius Caesar too.
Oh I also like how yours is nice and well centered.

 

Uh, no - I got RIC X for £100; the coins were each considerably more expensive

ATB,
Aidan.

 

Ohhhhh lol! I was totally dumbfounded and was about to PM you asking you if you checked to make sure they were legit because £100 for just that Caesar alone would probably be the cheapest one sold since the 1960s xD (when a Pound Sterling was worth much more than today).

It’s crazy how much books on coins cost. I was looking on Amazon because that book looked interesting and well..the closest I found was this:



Why are they so expensive?? I don’t need a hardcover but I can’t find a soft cover one on Amazon.

 

I'm not aware that any of the RIC volumes were ever printed in soft cover. All the volumes are quite expensive -- a set will cost you over $1,000 -- but sometimes used copies cost a bit less. Just make sure to get the latest edition of any volume you buy, since quite a few were updated, some more than once. See the list of the most recent editions of all the volumes at https://www.forumancientcoins.com/numiswiki/view.asp?key=RIC.

 

Thanks Donna!

Wow $1,000 is alot of money for books. I wish they would make digital versions like most books.

But on the other hand I wouldn’t need the last books only the first 4 since my interest is more towards the beginning and middle of the Empire before denarii became so debased that they don’t even look like silver coins anymore.

 

Love the unusual Caracalla divvus issue - have read the article in that coin many many times.

 

Yes, it is, but they are large and have extensive photographic plates. They were published in a limited print run and are in high demand. It's a supply and demand thing. I think Aidan got RIC X for a steal!

You -- and I don't mean you in the sense of one but you in particular, @Gam3rBlake -- need some books. However, I do not recommend RIC for you.

First of all, you're interested in Roman Republican coins in addition to imperial ones and RIC doesn't include them. Secondly, the work is quite out of date, and the introductory material (coin dating, place of minting, and so on) -- while useful -- has been in many cases disproven by subsequent scholarship. Lastly, while it is very extensive, RIC is not complete (no reference can be) and its estimate of a coin's "rarity" is based upon its representation in the main museum collections at the time. Its biggest fault, however, is that RIC has NUMEROUS listings for coins that don't really exist, but were cited from Cohen by Mattingly & Sydenham without verification. For example, Wiczay may misdescribe a coin, which is listed by Cohen (who cites Wiczay without verification) and is re-cited in RIC without verification, thus perpetuating misinformation for a century.

Moreover, it often includes unofficial types that are known only from ancient plated fourees or "barbarous" imitations without noting that they were not official mint products. This is a particular problem with the Severan listings.

RIC is in need of a serious upgrade -- and certain volumes are in the process of being upgraded or were recently upgraded (RIC II, vol. 3, for example).

For the money, the best general Roman coin catalog is David Sear's Roman Coins and Their Values. The introductory material alone would serve you well. Is David Sear right about everything? No. The dates he assigns to undated coins is wrong in many cases, such as the dates assigned to coins issued under Septimius Severus (because he uses Hill as a source), or so vague as to be useless (i.e. dating just about every coin of Faustina II without filiation to "AD 161-175."

For the money, the best catalog for Roman Imperial coins before Gordian III is BMCRE, which is extensively illustrated, includes every coin in the British Museum collection at the time, and references other museum collections when the British Museum collection lacks a specimen. If a coin is dubious, it notes the fact. But its introductory material is out-of-date and the catalog remains incomplete, as all catalogs must.

You might think that online sources are more reliable because they allow for information to be up-to-date, but they aren't. For the most part, online sources are based on previous references (OCRE, for example, is based on RIC and rather uncritically so) and rely on people submitting accurate information to the site (Wildwinds) or dealers accurately describing what they are selling (acsearchinfo, etc). It is not an uncommon occurrence, for example, for a coin to be inaccurately attributed at Wildwinds.

 

RIC VI to X can and are useful for general purposes and are rather easy to use and comprehensive enough for the regular collector. Where it lacks is in the details of both dating and general chronology -- for instance inside a period of for instance 367-375 or 378-383 you don't get a relative chronology of types as it would have been more useful and easier to use but that's not too much of an issue. You can also note errors and addenda on the pages yourself, as I bet all collectors and numismatists do. For Volume V, Estiot and Mairat's RIC Online is vastly superior to the published book.

 

I don't have my coins handy, but count the pennies on your eyes and Taxman by The Beatles is mine.

 

How about some German jazz?! Botticelli Baby is a jazz combo consisting of bass, vocals, trumpet, trombone, saxophone, drums, guitar and piano.



They sing a song called "Lucilla," which I illustrate with a denarius I've never posted here before.


Lucilla, AD 161-169.
Roman AR denarius, 3.38 g, 18.7 mm, 12 h.
Rome, AD 161/162.
Obv: LVCILLAE AVG ANTONINI AVG F, bare-headed and draped bust, right.
Rev: VOTA / PVBLI / CA within laurel-wreath.
Refs: RIC 791; BMCRE 329-330; Cohen 98; RCV 5494; MIR 22-4/10a; CRE 275.

 

Another striking song and coin to compliment each other:

 

@Roman Collector and @Gam3rBlake, Volumes I-IV of BMCRE -- covering Augustus through Commodus -- are all available online, including the plates, at the Internet Archive, at the following links listed in a post at Forvm Ancient Coins:

https://www.forumancientcoins.com/board/index.php?topic=96381.msg705022#msg705022

BMC RE Vol 1-4:
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.69977
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.69978
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.69979
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.69980

 

...i love the James Gang...i have a few pics of the original members, B-N i'm from Missoura n all... ><

 

That's fairly useful, though I prefer the dead tree editions



Spink don't have any paperbook editions of RIC and I think they sold out of this latest reprint of BMCRE 10-12 years ago, but they have started selling downloadable PDFs of some books, including some RIC editions and Sear:

https://spinkbooks.com/search?page=4&q=e-library

I don't know how the PDFs can be sold out, so I can only assume they've limited the numbers available to keep sales of the physical editions up. That or they've temporarily stopped selling them for some reason - I guess one could email them to find out.

ATB,
Aidan.

 

Howdy neighbor from Kansas City.

 

I don't have any Mongolian wolf coins to illustrate this song ...



... but it's SIX DEGREES OF AWESOME!

So here's a Roman wolf coin I like:


Constantine I, AD 307-337.
Roman billon reduced centenionalis, 2.44 g, 17.4 mm, 12 h.
Constantina/Arles, AD 331-332.
Obv: VRBS ROMA, helmeted bust of Roma, left, wearing imperial robes.
Rev: Lupa Romana, left, suckling Romulus and Remus; branch between two stars above; SCONST in exergue.
Refs: RIC vii p. 273, 368; RCV 16497; LRBC I 371; Cohen 17.

 

..me neither...but i can front ya a few Mongolian sawbucks..RC..

 

Well, this is tangentially linked to the wolves, as 3epkano have an album "Hans the reluctant wolf juggler" (!), though this isn't from that album.

3epkano (pronounced Zerkalo = mirror in Russian) are described as post-rock/experimental and have specialised in soundtracks for silent films. I saw them playing live in Christchurch Cathedral (Dublin) a few years back at Halloween - they provided the music for "The Cabinet of Dr Caligari" and it was brilliant.

This is from "Der Golem":



Here's a recent arrival - no wolves or monsters:

Moneyer: C. Considius Paetus
Obv.: Laureate head of Apollo right
Rev.: C·CONSIDIVS - Curule chair on which lies wreath
Exergue: PAETVS
Mint: Rome (46 BC)
Wt./Size/Axis: 3.82g / 19mm / -
References:

• RSC 3 (Considia)
• Sydenham 990a
• Crawford 465/1b
• HCRI 77a
• RBW 1623

Provenances:

• Ex. Aes Rude Chiasso 10, 5-Apr-1984, lot 111

Acquisition: Naville Numismatics Online auction NN Live 68 #320 3-Oct-2021



ATB,
Aidan.

 

I really don't do ancients but this is on my mind right now and I need some help. A friend said she found this coin on a parking lot about 60 years ago. It is about the size of a US dime and appears to be silver. I have no way of knowing if this is original or a reproduction and what coin it is supposed to be. Thanks in advance for everyone's help.