I have 4 unidentified coins. A B C and D I won't put them all up at once. One at a time and I need pointed in the right direction. They are probably fairly common as the price was certainly right. I don't know much at all about ancients. Thank you! Coin A I think I have Constantine I Constantine The Great founds Constantinople Ancient Roman Coin Victory on reverse?
Your coin is from a series called City Commemoratives. Similar example https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=8908783 On this exceptional page http://www.catbikes.ch/coinstuff/coins-ric.htm if you scroll down to City Commemorative types, this is the "Victory on prow" type. You also have there a Wildwinds link where you can see lots of examples of this type in various mints.
Oh thank you! I did pretty good then for a rookie. On the right path. It appears at least the reverse is RIC 63 Awesome!
The Victory-on-prow reverse commemorates a naval victory led by Constantine's son Constans, which aided in securing the city of Byzantium, which would be remade into Constantinople. It would continue on as the center of the Byzantine Empire.
I don't think it's 63. The mintmark (in the exergue, bottom of the reverse) appears to end in CONST This would indicate RIC VII Arles 369 PCONST, SCONST (palm branch(es) in field) RIC VII Arles 374 PCONST, SCONST (wreath in field) RIC VII Arles 401 PCONST, SCONST (chi-rho in field) But the coin condition doesn't allow a clear answer. Here is my example from Siscia - I also wanted a coin of this type RIC VII Siscia 224
The way the letters are spaced in exergue makes me think there wasn't anything before CONS. It looks like a Constatinople mint mark to me CONS? But you're right - it's hard to tell. For those of you wondering why Arles (or Arelate) would have a mint mark like CONST, that city was also built up by Constantine and had the alternate name Constantina.
I totally agree the coin is hard to pinpoint. I just checked Dane's Excel and the Constantinople examples in RIC are RIC VII Constantinople 63 CONS gamma, CONSZ, CONSIA RIC VII Constantinople 63 CONS gamma, CONSZ, CONSIA RIC VII Constantinople 63 CONSIA RIC VII Constantinople 63 CONS gamma, CONSZ, CONSIA RIC VII Constantinople 79 CONSZ dot, CONSIA dot RIC VII Constantinople 86 dot CONSZ dot RIC VII Constantinople 79 CONSZ dot The last letter of the mintmark could also be a Z so would fit the examples here, but for me it looks like a T. CONSZ dot or dot CONSZ dot could be possible matches. If I stare at the pic more, I think I see RIC VII Constantinople 86 dot CONSZ dot @TheNickelGuy, don't try to clean the coin. I don't think you can improve it too much. And welcome to ancient coins world of course. But for the future, try to get better examples (believe me, I am NOT a condition snob, but many types of coins are cheap and you can get a nice examples without effort. At least you need to sure it can be properly identified and you like it in hand - and this is very subjective)
Crispus was in charge...Constans was about 4 years old. The city was renamed in honor of Constantine II, who was born there.
Actually it cost me about $6.50 - 7.00 shipped. The lot of 4 I bought was kind of for the fun of identifying. They are all rough like this. I already got my money's worth thanks to you guys responding. Naw, I wouldn't clean it any. It does make my other small ancient collection look better. LOL Each of those 4 cost me about the same. I'm going to settle on identifying this for now as Ancient Roman Coin ci330 AD Obverse : Constantine I Constantine The Great founds Constantinople City Commemorative type Reverse: Victory on prow
This is good. You are already aware that if a coin is old, it doesn't mean automatically it's expensive. There are people who think this and other people who want others to think this. The obverse on your coin is not Constantine. It's bust of Constantinopolis - so a metaphor. My coin including fees was 12 EUR. It was not an extraordinary deal but I wanted one of this type and put a winning prebid of 10 EUR because I didn't want to buy group lots for it or whatever.
