Today the local post office announced they were not delivering mail due to the foot of snow that has brought central Virginia to its knees. I know, but this is not Northern Manitoba or even Minnesota and we suffer easily. My street probably won't get plowed until Monday. Yesterday when there was only about 4" on the ground the mail truck drove down the middle of the street and the carrier got out to walk the last few feet to our mailboxes rather than risking driving out of the one set of tire tracks down the middle of the street. My share of this mail event was both of the coins I had been hoping would not get lost in the snow. From a VCoins dealer in the Netherlands came the coin below. It is a rather small upgrade of one I had of the a similar type which I have discussed here many times (including this month) and about which I have a page on my website. The silvering it retains makes it harder to photograph well but the coin is special enough I wanted even a little improvement when it became available. My question is whether anyone on CT pays enough attention to such postings that they can explain why the coin is special to me (silly me). Please do not spill the beans if you are a professional numismatist in the hobby as long as I have been but I would enjoy hearing from any of our crowd that have been on CT almost as long as they have collected ancient coins and have paid enough attention to be able to ID the coin. Old: New: OK did anybody notice they are not the same exactly? Again only for the relatively new, what is different about these two coins? Anyone can play for these last questions: Which is RIC 581? Should I keep both or sell off the lesser? Do show your coins that are RIC 581 or very close.
Other then the different bust types of Maximian, is it the Γ/•XXI•Λ•I•? Other of the type have descriptions with "A interesting series from Sisica that spells out the name of Hercules using three mintmarks ending in HP-KOY-ΛI. The KOY middle seems to be the hardest to find of the three types" Yours is one of these 3?
Well the new coin would be 581, right? With radiate, bare bust right. I would describe it as seen from behind, but RIC doesn't do that. Is that drapery, or just the border of the bust? I find RIC Vb incomplete and confusing to the point that I rarely look anything up in it. Why do they give a list of obverse inscriptions, as on p. 259, in which some inscriptions are numbered and others aren't??? 580 refers to obverse inscription 2, which is not what your first coin has. It has number 3 of the non-numbered inscriptions. And what does C. F. mean? Not to mention that 580 lists two busts, but not the one on your coin, which is radiate, cuirassed right. Anyway, very nice varieties, but you'll excuse me while I stoke the fire with RIC V.
C, F refers to a bust code list somewhere in RIC V before that point that defined busts with drapery and cuirass or just cuirass. I believe it is well hidden in volume V just before Carus??? I will never understand the choices made by authors of 90% of the coin books I have read. Are all of mine Cuirassed only or some D&C? To answer that go searching for coins with more drapery. I did. http://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=1105919 The point here was both coins were the came RIC number (581) and so are the rest of the HP KOY ΛI series unless the obverse legend had PF instead of just P in which case they assigned RIC 580 no matter what the reverse legend since they considered the HP here as just a part of the officina A designation and did not assign different numbers to bust differences. The two coins differ in bust style but not in obverse legend so both are 581. Equally unimportant as far as RIC number goes is where the A or other officina letter is placed (field, before XXI or after XXI). I probably would not have made several choices as done by the authors of RIC (especially volume V). Below are examples of the KOY and ΛI coins all RIC 580 because all have PF unlike both of my HP coins shown above. The bare bust is considerably less common and the new HP is my only example. That brings us back to the question for everyone: Should I sell duplicates or (new version of question) buy the other versions I still lack?
Sorry, but I had to chuckle to myself ........ Curious though, are there enough hills in the neighbourhood to entertain the kids? (I hope so => snow can be fun if you embrace it!!) I tried, but I admit that I sucked at your quiz ... oh, but I agree with Bing that you should buy more coins rather than cull the herd!! (cull the hoard of culls?) Oh, and I know that this coin isn't the same as your Maximianus examples, but I love posting it anyway ... he looks so fat!!
Buy whatever makes you happy . I agree with your prior assertion that it is better to hoard coins than to sell or give them to someone who won't appreciate them.
Interesting........The only difference I noticed was the obvious one---the stylistic differences in busts. I seem to miss the more subtle variations and need to work at it more (P F or lack of it). I'd buy it for that reason alone. The snow has us bogged down here as well---especially the eastern half of LI. The side streets are always an 'adventure' to try to navigate through... LOl
I noticed the difference in bust types. It is hard to read the letters from pics, so I do not see a difference in the letters. Something I have not noticed before is the line of dots at the lower edge of the beard. It is on both of your coins and some of the others posted here. Is that a line drawn by the celator to define the edge of the beard, or is he wearing a pearl necklace? PS - it is 60 outside now and headed to 72. Gulf coast of Texas weather is kinda nice this time of year.
Here's a mystery coin along the gist of this thread. RIC records the obverse legend IMP CMA MAXIMIANVS AVG for Cyzicus, but epsilon//XXIdot is only recorded for a different series altogether, from the mint of Antioch. From Cyzicus, the CONCORDIA MILITVM types with this obverse legend are recorded with SC or SCstar in exergue, and the spelling CONCORDIAE. CONCORDIA MILITVM is recorded as 606 from Cyzicus, but with a different obverse legend and XXI in exergue. Since CMA MAXIMIANVS AVG is recorded only for Cyzicus, it must be an emission of that mint, with obverse legend and exergue not in RIC, but somewhere between 602 and 607. Someone needs to devote their life to organizing this series. It's not going to be me.
RIC V is very outdated and rife with errors. The header on page 291 says Antioch but all of the coins are Cyzicus. There is a good effort updating RIC V part 1 but part 2 is available for someone who wants to travel all over Europe sifting through museums.
