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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;DonnaML, post: 4718008, member: 110350&quot;][USER=103687]@abc123[/USER], thank you so much for this fantastic work!&nbsp; First and foremost, so much for my theory that there are no known examples of a Marius Capito denarius with the control number CXXIII on both the obverse and reverse, given the example you found on acsearch from Numismatica Varesi.&nbsp; Definitely a different reverse die from the hybrid examples (including mine) with CXXIII on the reverse. Obviously, we have nothing to which we can compare the obverse die. (Unfortunately, the obverse control-symbol is either off the flan or I can&#039;t enlarge the photo enough to see it, so the nature of that control symbol appears still to be unknown.)</p><p><br /></p><p>I feel like a complete idiot for not having found that example myself, and I know exactly what I did wrong: instead of searching just for &quot;378&quot; and &quot;Capito&quot; and &quot;CXXIII,&quot; I included &quot;Ceres&quot; in my search for some reason, and, therefore, the search failed to capture any coin with a description in a language in which Ceres is spelled differently -- as in the example in question, spelling her name &quot;Cerere&quot; in Italian. I hate making mistakes like that; it&#039;s exactly the sort of thing for which my boss at my last law firm job used to yell and scream at me whenever it happened, while never saying anything positive when I did something well.&nbsp; The main reason I eventually quit that job!</p><p><br /></p><p>Thanks also for finding the Paris (BnF) example of the same hybrid as mine and the German example I found that was sold three times in the last 10 years.&nbsp; (I wonder if it&#039;s been sold so often because someone figured out that it&#039;s plated, although none of the auction descriptions mention that.)&nbsp; I didn&#039;t realize that one could search for the BnF&#039;s coin holdings at Gallica, even though I&#039;ve used Gallica many times for genealogical research.*&nbsp; I do think that of the three CIIII - CXIIII hybrid examples I&#039;ve seen, mine has the most eye-appeal, not to mention the highest weight (3.44 compared to 3.41 and 3.37).&nbsp; As the old saying goes, that and $2.75 will get me on the subway! The only other known example of this hybrid appears to be the one at the British Museum (according to Crawford), although it didn&#039;t show up on my search of their numismatic collection.&nbsp; At least now I know how Crawford was able to be so confident that the Paris example is plated, given the spot in Ceres&#039; hair where the plating is broken and the copper shows through.</p><p><br /></p><p>In any event, I completely agree with [USER=103687]@abc123[/USER] that &quot;[t]he skill of engraving [of the hybrid] is on par with the authentic dies.&quot; Whether that means that it was a mint worker working on the side who made it, I have no idea. Although surely a mint worker would have known better than to create a hybrid (out of entirely new dies created for that purpose) accidentally, and, if it was such a person, must have made it that way on purpose -- whether because he wanted to make sure he didn&#039;t accept the hybrid coins himself (as [USER=19463]@dougsmit[/USER] suggests), or for some other unknown reason.&nbsp; On the other hand, I&#039;m sure that private forgers with great skill existed in antiquity, as much as they do in modern times.</p><p><br /></p><p>As I mentioned, I also wonder why anyone would have created a fourree using as much silver as mine seems to have, resulting in plating sufficiently thick to remain intact for 2,100 years.&nbsp; (Although it could, of course, have been buried not long after it was made rather than circulating for a lengthy period of time.)</p><p><br /></p><p>* For example, I used Gallica to find a picture of the official coat of arms from 1696 belonging to my 6th great-grandfather Abraham &quot;Le Roux&quot; Brunschwig (1671-1740) (a/k/a &quot;the Red Jew&quot;), one of only two or three Jewish men in all of Alsace who had coats of arms under Louis XIV.&nbsp; (From my understanding, it was basically something even a Jew could buy for enough money, so he must have been pretty pretentious!)</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1156595[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1156596[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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