Tonight's post is a coin from my recent group of oddball coins as were the barbarous denarii shown a couple days ago. This one however is plated or fourree. The style is not all that bad but it is certainly not an official mint product style and shows what I consider to be an interesting 'situation' caused by mismatching the obverse and reverse dies. I find this common fourree characteristic interesting but neither the previous owner or auction house saw fit to mention it. Can you see what is odd here? (Answer below) Antoninus Pius / Marcus Aurelius fourree denarius IMP T AEL CAES HADRI ANTONINVS / AVRELIVS CAES AVG PII F COS These two headed adoption coins are pretty common but this is unusual since the obverse of Pius copies the type used at the beginning of his reign rather than that used two years later when Aurelius was adopted. Early Pius obverses are unusual in that they do not show the title Augustus. This was supposedly a reflection of his dispute with the Senate over his desire to see Hadrian deified. Below I show a 'normal' (and solid) early Pius denarius and a normal, solid adoption coin with the title AVG on the obverse. The reverses show Aurelius as AVG PII F (son of Pius the Augustus) but do not give that title to Pius himself on his side of the coin. Fourrees are often very ugly due to core exposure and corrosion. This is neither the prettiest of the ugliest in my collection. I have enough fourrees that I no longer buy ordinary ones unless there is some feature of added interest to me. This one came as part of a group. I might not have bought it as a single because I might have missed the mismatch of dies. Now I have to keep it. It does not take much arm twisting for me to learn to like a coin. I will be showing other fourrees in the next week or so. This one is a well made, heavy silver fourree. Later rules are more often found with less well made thinly silvered coins. I'll show some of them later. My question for you is would you have recognized this coin's style is not quite right or that the dies were mismatched if not tipped off by the core exposure. What about the style strikes you as 'wrong'? Are there 'mint state' fourrees showing no core and masquerading as solid coins in high end collections? In yours?
I would not have recognized that distinction....and I don't have any 'mint state fourrees masquerading' in my collection. I'm looking forward to seeing if anyone else does.
Perhaps this was used to help them identify their own work. An interesting Fouree. I really like the style of Aurelius' portrait.
I have a fouree mule of Orbiana: It has the obverse of this Orbiana denarius: And the reverse of this denarius of her mother-in-law, Julia Mamaea:
It would seem desirable to have a way that could keep you from being fooled by your own work. The other option is that they did not know better. I prefer the first. Crazy like a fox outranks stupid.
I realized I have one fourree that apparently masqueraded as the real deal in antiquity---this 'denarius' of Octavian:
I like the idea that the people running this money-faking scheme wanted some of that fancy new double-headed coinage featuring the fancy new future emperor, and that the celator, over in the corner with his carving tools, knew, but he was going to be damned if he was going to learn how to carve the new style when the old style had for years worked just fine thank you very much, and if those pencil-pushers at the front of the house can't tell the difference between one legend and the next, neither will the general populace be able to. Cranky like a fox?
