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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;red_spork, post: 7835946, member: 74282&quot;]Today my win from the most recent Ibercoin auction arrived. This coin was identified by the auctionhouse as a Crawford 44/5 anonymous denarius, a large early group that most anonymous denarii you see get identified as. Not only is this type stylistically different from anything in that 44/5 group, this particular denarius isn&#039;t entirely anonymous - there are 3, perhaps 4 dots below the horses and above the &quot;M&quot; of Roma, but what could it be?(of course, the attribution is copied below the coin if you just want a spoiler)</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1347159[/ATTACH]</p><p>Roman Republic AR Denarius(20mm, 3.33g), &quot;AL&quot; series, after 208 BC, uncertain (perhaps Spanish?) mint. Helmeted head of Roma right; behind, X / The Dioscuri galloping right, 3 dots arranged in triangle with 1 dot to right below horses; below, ROMA in linear frame. Crawford 111/1 var(unfinished monogram); cf. NAC 61, lot 499 for variety</p><p><br /></p><p>Crawford doesn&#039;t describe anything with a mintmark of a few dots arranged that way, but I remembered seeing this type before, so I checked my usual source for early Roma/Dioscuri denarii: <a href="http://www.stevebrinkman.ancients.info/anonymous/index.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.stevebrinkman.ancients.info/anonymous/index.html" rel="nofollow">the excellent guide written by Steve Brinkman and Pierluigi Debernardi</a>, which as usual, solved the mystery.</p><p><br /></p><p>Brinkman and Debernardi, in their discussion of <a href="http://www.stevebrinkman.ancients.info/anonymous/index.html#H110-1b" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.stevebrinkman.ancients.info/anonymous/index.html#H110-1b" rel="nofollow">Crawford 110/1b</a>(a stylistically similar variety with no dots at all), say:</p><p><br /></p><blockquote><p>Of the three known reverse dies with no symbol, one of these displays 3 prominent dots and one very light dot in the exact placement and orientation of the corners of the AL monogram. An example with this phenomenon was in the NAC 61 RBW collection. In that sale, the coin was categorized as &quot;Cr. 111/1 var.&quot; and the phenomenon explained as an unfinished die.&nbsp;&nbsp; It could also be a die that was worn and prepared for recutting by grinding the fields to smooth the damaged surfaces, leaving traces of the the deeper punch-marks used by the die cutters to guide the outline of the AL monogram. Of course regardless of the explanation of these three dots, it is probably an unfinished die.</p></blockquote><p><br /></p><p>Comparing to a &quot;normal&quot; example of Crawford 111/1, the similarity in the placement of the dots on my coin and the placement of the &quot;AL&quot; monogram is immediately clear(not my coin, image credit NAC 61, lot 498):</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1347179[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>So, what we have essentially appears to be an unfinished die of the Crawford 111/1 &quot;AL&quot; series. Consulting the <a href="http://numismatics.org/archives/ark:/53695/schaefer.rrdp.b05#schaefer.rrdp.b05_0259" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://numismatics.org/archives/ark:/53695/schaefer.rrdp.b05#schaefer.rrdp.b05_0259" rel="nofollow">RRDP page for 110/1b and this 111/1 variety</a> as well as the <a href="http://numismatics.org/archives/ark:/53695/schaefer.rrdp.b05#schaefer.rrdp.b05_0259" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://numismatics.org/archives/ark:/53695/schaefer.rrdp.b05#schaefer.rrdp.b05_0259" rel="nofollow">page for &quot;normal&quot; 111/1 examples</a> doesn&#039;t reveal any examples found by Schaefer from this die to include a fully engraved monogram, so it appears that whatever mistake lead to the use of this unfinished die was quite possibly never rectified. There are a number of series of early Roman Republic coinage in all metals that include examples with and without a mintmark, seemingly a conscious change by the mint at one point to start or stop engraving mintmarks in the dies, but I am only aware of this single series, and this single die, of the phenomenon of an unfinished mintmark like this and for this reason, this coin is very special to me and will almost certainly make my top 5 or 10 list for the year.</p><p><br /></p><p>Special thanks to [USER=100445]@Michael Stolt[/USER] who pointed this coin out to me, realizing that it at least wasn&#039;t described right and that there was some kind of symbol and to [USER=89970]@Fugio1[/USER] whose excellent guide to the attribution of these coins I consult at least weekly.</p><p><br /></p><p>As usual, feel free to post anything relevant[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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