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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;dougsmit, post: 2285040, member: 19463&quot;]Certainly Elagabalus!</p><p><br /></p><p>I&#039;m no expert in these so I dug out my copy of Bellinger, <b>The Syrian Tetradrachms of Caracalla and Macrinus</b> which, oddly, also has Elagabalus.&nbsp; His coin 43 seems a match except his description does not list the DE (none of the series do) but his plate IV, 11 clearly shows the letter.&nbsp; All of his listings in this section mention the star and the plates show 5,6 and 8 pointed ones without mention of the difference in the text.&nbsp;&nbsp; Bellinger was written in 1940 with my copy being the 1981 Durst reissue.&nbsp; Things were different back then. Not all olden day scholars saw the need to mention minor variations like star points.&nbsp; I am surprised about the DE not making the list but Bellinger was a name university scholar and could do things his way. Today, we are a bit dot crazy by their standards.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Moral: Books are wonderful but no better than the scholarship that produced them.</p><p><br /></p><p>By &#039;flaw&#039; do you mean the hangnail?&nbsp; You have to realize that ancient coins were not made on machine prepared round blanks.&nbsp; Things like this happen.&nbsp; Enough people want their coins round that you should get a discount for taking a coin like this but the people who made it did not see it as a big deal.&nbsp;&nbsp; I must admit this is odd on Syrian tets I&#039;ve seen but common of some denarii of the early 3rd century.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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