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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;red_spork, post: 2247425, member: 74282&quot;]The coin that I&#039;m sharing today is part of my recent Roman Republican buying spree that I&#039;ve funded by selling off my US collection, as well as a handful of medievals and ancients. Many auction listings list these coins under Crawford 56/4, and while these types are stylistically and chronologically linked to the Crawford 56 series, at 5.75 grams(giving an as of ~18 grams), this triens is simply too light to be a part of that series, which were struck at an as standard starting out around 56 grams and declining to 30 or so grams. Additionally, you can see in Minerva&#039;s chin and neck that this coin is overstruck on some other kind of coin, though there is not enough detail to determine the exact undertype. The seller that I bought this from made note of the fact that this coin was from an anonymous light series that wasn&#039;t identified by Crawford, but the only information he had was from the notes on a similarly lightweight coin that was part of the first RBW sale.</p><p><br /></p><p>Luckily, Andrew McCabe recently published his paper &quot;The Anonymous Struck Bronze Coinage of the Roman Republic: a Provisional Arrangement&quot; online(previously only available in Essays Russo) which sheds quite a bit of light on these issues. In the paper, McCabe classifies coins of this style and weight as &quot;group H1&quot; which he convincingly argues are overstrikes on bronzes of Rome&#039;s vanquished enemies in Southern Italy, Sardinia or Sicily(as well as occasional Roman coins) which were minted near the end of the Second Punic war. For those wanting to read more, the full paper is available at: <a href="https://www.academia.edu/15757344/Andrew_McCabe_The_Anonymous_Struck_Bronze_Coinage_of_the_Roman_Republic_in_Essays_in_Honour_of_Roberto_Russo_Witschonke_van_Alfen_eds_2013" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.academia.edu/15757344/Andrew_McCabe_The_Anonymous_Struck_Bronze_Coinage_of_the_Roman_Republic_in_Essays_in_Honour_of_Roberto_Russo_Witschonke_van_Alfen_eds_2013" rel="nofollow">https://www.academia.edu/15757344/Andrew_McCabe_The_Anonymous_Struck_Bronze_Coinage_of_the_Roman_Republic_in_Essays_in_Honour_of_Roberto_Russo_Witschonke_van_Alfen_eds_2013</a> . I believe that it requires creating a free account to access, but it is well worth it. On top of the really great history behind this coin, it has good provenance from a famous collector. This coin was previously sold at Italo Vecchi Sale 3 in September of 1996, which was the sale of the late numismatist and dealer Giorgio Fallani, whose family still runs a gallery in Rome. AncientCoinGuru was even nice enough to scan a copy of the plates from Vecchi 3 for me while I was waiting on this to ship out and I decided I liked the plates so much that I ended up buying a copy of the catalog for my own library.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]444132[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>Roman Republic Æ Triens(20.5mm, 5.75g), anonymous, after 211 BC. Helmeted head of Minerva right; above, four pellets / ROMA Prow right; below four pellets. Crawford cf. 56/4. McCabe group H1(Half-weight fractions, overstrikes on Punic bronzes). Ex. Vecchi Sale 3, lot 124.</p><p><br /></p><p>Feel free to post any Second Punic War era Republican coins(or those of Rome&#039;s enemies).[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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