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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Gallienus, post: 1578082, member: 42034&quot;]Very interesting coin.&nbsp; As you know Valerian was the father of Gallienus and I&#039;ve been seeking to buy a Valerian for at least 4-5 years now.</p><p><br /></p><p>Note that I&#039;m not really an expert on ancient attributations but will take a stab at it.</p><p>I do not believe this coin is of Valerian (reigned 253-260 AD) but rather of Constantine (307 -337) or of that era.&nbsp;&nbsp; If you look at Wildwinds:</p><p><a href="http://wildwinds.com/coins/ric/valerian_I/i.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://wildwinds.com/coins/ric/valerian_I/i.html" rel="nofollow">http://wildwinds.com/coins/ric/valerian_I/i.html</a></p><p><br /></p><p>you&#039;ll see that his portrait is quite different.&nbsp; At this point in time Roman Imperial portraits often reflected what the guy actually looked like. An exception is the Provincial coinage which is sometimes quite rare but this is not a Provincial piece.&nbsp;&nbsp; The front of the legend is difficult to read but appears to be DN.&nbsp; DN= Dominum Noster or Our Lord which was not used until times near Constantine. This led me immediately to believe the coin was later.</p><p><br /></p><p>Also most of Valerian&#039;s coins are antonianii which have the radiate (spiked) crown.&nbsp; At that point in time regular denominations were used e.g. antoninianus, sestersius, dupondius, as, etc.&nbsp; In Constantine&#039;s time coins are more likely to be just classed as coppers of very small size AE4, small size AE3, etc.</p><p><br /></p><p>Finally looking up Constantine on Wildwinds you see one example of his obv legend as:</p><p>&nbsp;FL VALER CONSTANTINVS P F AVG</p><p>So apparently Constantine used the legend with &quot;VAL&quot; preceeding the rest of this name.&nbsp; This may be why the seller attributed it as Valerian.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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