Ancient Change of Direction

Oh, completing a mint set I think. Randy & Doug are focused on it.

 

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thank you! i may have to join the race. granted, i will finish last, but it's a thing i've contemplated doing before i knew about the race.

 

Even though many of us here concentrate on ancients, I think you will find we also appreciate medieval and world coins more than average US collectors as well. Some of my series are had to determine if they are ancient/medieval, medieval/modern, or even ancient/medieval/modern in the case of Chinese cash. If there is no clear boundaries, we would be silly to not appreciate other time periods.

 

With well over 2000 variants its easy to get distracted. I'd like a set of the mints, but I'd also like more FH from Antioch too, as well as a mint set from Siscia, with each type of the Fel Temps of Constans, Constantius II, Constantius Gallus, and Julian II. Not to mention certain Greek, Roman Republican, and Imperial coins I'm keeping an eye out for, and the ones I don't know I want yet But I'm doing all this passively right now.

 

just 2000? I thought every swing of the hammer was different.

 

That is a problem. Generally collectors draw lines along characteristics like the type of diadem worn on the portrait, the pose and attire /hairstyle of the horseman and the placement of letters in the field. All these things were caused by intentional differences in the dies rather than accidents of hammer swings. Antioch use 15 numbered workshops and two major poses at the same time so there are more variations from there than, for example, Amiens which had one shop and may or may not have had a letter A in the obverse field. A lot of specializing is deciding what differences are significant and what are random. I would love to know what caused Antioch to use the FH3 and FH4 types at the same time over such a long period. Recently more attention has been paid to the possibility of the horsemen shown being identifiable to specific tribes.

Are there similar differences in coins of Crispina that mat will discover and share with us? Perhaps she changed her hairstyle at some date or perhaps there were two diecutters that did her coins and it will be possible to show progression in their work. We shall see.