A New Septimius Severus Denarius - Opinions Please

From the pictures I've seen showing you I can understand that feeling my friend

Q

Edit : Oh, you were meaning the coin ?
Sorry

 

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Fortunately we have a book for that. The great Reka Devnia Hoard of 1930 consisting of 81000+ silver coins included a bit over 7000 coins of Septimius Severus. The book on the hoard was arranged by Cohen numbers with the OP coin which was dated IMP VIIII being C.212. There were 88 coins in the hoard. The same reverse but dated IMP VIII is C.210 but the hoard included only three coins. There are a couple types with over 200 count and maybe a dozen more over 100. There are many types with only one example and I have several types that were not in the hoard at all. We could do a thread on 'Show your RD 0 coins'.

Where we draw the line between 'common' and 'scarce' is a matter of opinion but an 88 rater is never going to be 'rare'. The report, N.A. Mouchmov, Le Tresor Numismatique de Reka Devnia (Marcianopolis) is a lot of fun. The originals were printed on high acid paper that tends to rot away making the books worth more than most coins in it. It was reprinted a few years back and I doubt many of us who got one then will be selling it on this side of the grave. If you find one, I suggest you buy it.

 

That is a great idea for a thread Doug. I hope you do not mind if I start a thread like this.

 

This link will be useful for those interested specifically in the rarity of Severan silver coins:

http://web3.forest.usf.edu/main/other/severan/coins/

As part of a searchable database compiling data from "fifty-seven silver hoards ranging in date from AD 198 to c. AD 270", it includes the coins from Reka Devnia and at least one other major Severan period hoard, the Shapwick Hoard of 1998 (mainly plentiful in coins of Septimius, with 5741 of them). The search results show occurrence by geographical region as well as the specific hoards.

@dougsmit points out there were 88 specimens of the OP coin in the Reka Devnia Hoard. There were 75 specimens in the Shapwick Hoard. As a comparison, another popular and interesting Septimius type, the one with Dea Caelestis riding a lion, turns up with 201 in Reka Devnia, but "only" 42 in Shapwick. Still, we could say the type is clearly more common than the OP type. I suppose for something we could consider scarce, we're looking at numbers closer to 20.

Looking out for rarities will always be fun for some of us, but not always because we think they will make a coin worth more money.