A Roman denarius from the newly-founded colony of Narbo

Awesome piece Spork the toning on it is excellent!

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

LOL!!!!!!!

 

Great wins! I surprisingly won several other items (approx 20 over the last week or so), that I just shot-gunned several of the Agora items. There were some great items, but I am very happy with the in-bound Litra!

 

Red, Super nice coin, and awesome old cabinet tone.
Doug H.

 

There seems to be several varieties of this series with different names on the obverse:
C•MALLE•C•F
L POMPONI CNF
L . COSCO . M . F

Who were these people? The series seems to have been struck under the moneyers L Licinius Crassus & Cn Domitius Ahenobarbus.

 

Crawford discusses this and says that the 5 men whose names appear on the obverse were the junior magistrates and were the ones directly responsible for the minting of the denarii, while L Licinius Crassus and Cn Domitius Ahenobarbus were the two senior magistrates responsible for the administration of the new colony. It's certainly quite different from the framework under which any other denarii that I know of were minted.

 

The reason I asked is that I just purchased one with the obverse legend "L . COSCO . M . F around, X behind". In my catalog, I generally list my RR coins by the moneyer. So in this case who might that be?

 

Standard references list it both ways. I order my RR coins by Crawford number and under who he lists as the moneyer and Crawford lists them under "L.LIC CN.DOM and associates", but RSC lists this particular one as under L. Cosconius M.F. One interesting note I spotted in RSC while checking: "The Cosconia gens was plebeian and the moneyer is only known from his coins."

 

So, out of curiosity, are any of these more rare than the others? All I can find is that the issue itself is scarce, but it seems I've seen a lot of these around lately.

 

Crawford lists 5 types under this issue along with the number of dies used for each, which should give an idea of relative rarity:

282/1. M Aurelius Scaurus - 85 obverse, 106 reverse
282/2. L Cosconius - 37 obverse, 46 reverse
282/3. C Malleolus - 32 obverse, 40 reverse
282/4. L Pomponius - 103 obverse, 129 reverse
282/5. L Porcius Licinus - 48 obverse, 60 reverse

 

Forgive me. Even though I've been collecting for a few decades, there are some things I just am not knowledgeable. If I read the number of dies correctly, C Malleolus would be the most scarce, followed closely by L Cosconius. And L Pomponius would be the least scarce. Correct?

 

All other factors being equal, yes. Dies numbers aren't always foolproof(there are always special cases like the "Eid Mar" denarii being all melted down), but they are usually OK for getting an idea of relative rarity.

 

I find this discussion to be highly interesting and informative....Thanks, Bing and red-stork.

 

dang, how'd i miss this post. that's a super coin RS and an awesome write up. that little guy on the reverse is awesome, this coin type is on my list...pretty high.