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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;dougsmit, post: 4437640, member: 19463&quot;]I&#039;ve told the story before but this group has high turnover so someone may enjoy it.</p><p><br /></p><p>I have two similar denarii of Septimius Severus from the earliest period of the &#039;Emesa&#039; mint using the undated legend used in 193 AD.&nbsp; The reverse is the scarce VICTOR IVST xxx. The British Museum Catalog (BMCRE volume V) lists a coin where xxx is AVG as number 338.&nbsp; My specimen (ex. Barry Murphy 2002) is quite clear.&nbsp; The BM coin shown on plate 15,8 is on a small flan losing the legend at the right reverse.&nbsp; I was happy to get this coin with such clear reverse legend.</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1109975[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>Previously, in the 1998 Bickford-Smith CNG sale, I had purchased a coin with reverse legend where xxx was quite clearly AVS rather than AVG.&nbsp; I remain uncertain whether this is an error caused by the fact that neither S nor G are letter forms used in Greek or if the abbreviation used here was the first two and last letter of the word AVgustuS.&nbsp; Either way, that coin was important to me as were several others in the collection of my late friend.&nbsp; Most of his better coins were taken by the British Museum but they passed on this one since they already had a BMCRE 338.&nbsp; There is enough of their coin showing to establish that my coin (below) and theirs are die duplicates (both sides).&nbsp; That means that the BMCRE338 listing should have read VICTOR IVST AVS but was listed AVG by incorrect assumption of what was missing due to the small flan.</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1109974[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>The question is which of my two coins is &#039;unlisted&#039;.&nbsp; The first matches the reading listed as number 338 while the second does not match the listing but is a die duplicate of the coin from which the listing was made.&nbsp; The two coins are different so one is &#039;unlisted&#039; based on an assumption made by the BM staff some time in the past.&nbsp; ...or was it???&nbsp; I see the possibility that the reading of 338 was influenced by the Cohen 738 coin VICTOR IVST AVG which may or may not have been seen by Cohen in person since the coin was not in the French National Collection but is credited to Wiczay (a reference unknown to me).&nbsp; I have no idea if the Wiczay coin has the reverse right legend or if Cohen/Wiczay made the assumption and the BM staff just copied it.&nbsp; Is the BM coin the same specimen as the Wiczay? </p><p><a href="https://www.forumancientcoins.com/numiswiki/view.asp?key=Wiczay" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.forumancientcoins.com/numiswiki/view.asp?key=Wiczay" rel="nofollow">https://www.forumancientcoins.com/numiswiki/view.asp?key=Wiczay</a></p><p>The plates in the linked work seem to be all Provincials.&nbsp; Are there Imperials also online? The plates date to the era before photography so are line drawings which may or may not be accurate to what was on the coin as opposed to what the artist wanted to see on the coin. </p><p><br /></p><p>Hardly one in a thousand who started this post will have read this far but this matter demonstrates one of the great appeals of collecting ancient coins to my way of thinking.&nbsp; Our coins have a history.&nbsp; We are not always aware of what happened to each of them between striking and entering our collections.&nbsp; If only our coins could talk, what stories could they tell?&nbsp; I would love to know if the Wiczay coin was one of the three coins discussed here or a different one.&nbsp; The collection was disbursed to the market a bit under 200 years ago.&nbsp; This is not the level of coin that would be easy to track.&nbsp; Wiczay had some really interesting types.&nbsp; This is just another Septimius Severus but it is my Septimius Severus.&nbsp; I hope to find someone to take the two together after I die but they will probably mean little to the 99% of collectors who were not offended in the line above where I said &quot;just another Septimius Severus&quot;.&nbsp;&nbsp; How many dealers would receive the two coins and suspect there was anything there to be seen?&nbsp; Few.&nbsp; Any?[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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