I was at the LCS today and they were scrambling to find world coins for me to look at, pulling out all kinds of unsorted bins. One of them was full of ancients. I know very, very little about ancients, but I would like to have a few examples in my collection and I felt like the clerk knew as little about them as I do so it might be a good opportunity to grab a few. I put about five aside and as I suspected he had no idea of value but he said I could have any of them for $30. I picked this one. It was labeled on the case as an antoninianus of Philip I from 244-249 AD. Can you tell me if everything looks OK with it and what kind of deal I got? It was neat seeing so many ancients in pretty nice shape there, but as I said, I know nothing and $30 adds up quickly.
For $30 I would have bought it even though I have a couple of better grade double denarii of that emperor. I would have liked to have seen that same tray for others in this price range. Your coin is a good representation of Roman coinage of that period. Unfortunately for Phillip the bottom was about to drop out of the empire as a resurgent Persia and the Gothic barbarians were about to come close to ending the empire two centuries before they actually did that. Your double denarius (antoninianus ) was of pretty good silver , somewhat under 50% silver. In 15 years it would be issued as a coin with only a 3 or 4% silver as the Empire had to significant debase its coinage to meet defense needs. I must warn you that once bitten by the lure of ancient coinage, and its attendant study of Ancient Times, you will find that you will have acquired an interest that you can never exhaust, and will never want to exhaust. By the way, if you get a chance to photograph the other coins in that tray, post them and i am sure that others here would like to see those $30 coins. May Fortuna and Tyche guide you in your quest, your argosy.
Most are provincial issues so weeding out your Roman one becomes a bit easier. A brief look and I saw two with the reverse legend PAX AETERN, RIC 40B and RIC 41. Have a look here and see if you tie it down https://www.wildwinds.com/coins/ric/philip_I/i.html
It's a great starter coin and you paid a decent price for it, especially with how much ancients have gone up in the past few years. I am curious what the other coins he had, could have been an even better "bargain" in the pile. But, we'll never know I guess. And like Kevin said, ancients are addicting once you get your first coin.
Thanks for the info. I'm sure an ancient collector would have been salivating at the pile and found plenty of bargains. They had a whole plastic tub full of them. I know that I had pulled out another one with Philip that was silver but it seemed smaller, and I also put aside a smaller bronze and a Byzantine coin. I know that much about it. When I first saw the name Philip I thought it might be Alexander the Great's father but I suppose that would probably have been written in Greek letters, and of course the years didn't match. When I had Roman coins in the past I got a few of those "uncleaned Roman coin" lots on eBay and it was all junk that you couldn't really identify so that's part of why I never got into ancients. When you see nice, quality coins like they had there it's a lot different. Unfortunately I won't be going back for a few months and odds are I'll never see that bin again, but maybe if I do I'll do some eBay research in the store on the ones that are labeled and see if I can find some bargains.
Many times this coin, or a similar coin of Gordian III, is people's first ancient. The reason is they are silver, low priced, and usually pretty good grade. This is due to massive mintages and troubles at the time, millions upon millions of these survive. It has always been a good stepping stone ancient, an upgrade from common late roman bronzes and byzantine bronzes. What I find fun is now that you have a coin of this man, read about his reign. Use the coin to drive your acquisition of knowledge, and you might read about other rulers you didn't know about, or other mints of the same emperor like Provincial issues. It just kind of builds, or sucks you in, gradually.
Yup, I have a Gordian with Mars on the reverse: And although I didn't read too much about his reign aside from skimming Wikipedia, it did suck me in. I never bought any late Roman bronzes, though. This was my first coin, and it took me so long to get a second because the emperors I cared about were so expensive. I agree though, it's a good idea to learn about his reign. I bought a coin of Antoninus Pius, and I'm reading a book about his reign. If you read a book that focuses on coins as well such as I am, it can really help to find fascinating issues from certain emperors that you didn't even know existed (speaking from experience). To build on the previous posts, learning about the Roman religion and their gods is important because that gives you insight on the meaning of these coins. I didn't read too much beforehand, and it gets pretty annoying searching for the gods while you're just trying to decide on a coin to buy. I'm really jealous of you finding ancient coins at your local coin store. I have exactly two, and they both deal almost exclusively in US coins, though the one further away does have some world coins.
I was a history major in college but never took a class on ancient history, so what I know is what I picked up on my own. I definitely have a lot to learn about Roman times and the individual emperors.
Your coin is a Philip I, RIC IV Part iii, 41 https://numismatics.org/ocre/id/ric.4.ph_i.41 and yes $30 was a good purchase price. This coin in that condition will typically sale at auction / ebay for around $45+-.
