ANCIENT- Indo-Sassanid Rarer Reverse-1000-1200 AD

Tbh i never knew there was such a reverse.

 

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I just can't believe that.

 

Toward the end of the Shahi period (perhaps late 13th century) the dies were about twice the diameter of the flans so you can get very different looking coins even from the same die set. I don't have a die matched set to illustrate this but here are two Mahi Pala attributed coins (how I do not know). On the bull side both have a single spot in the center of the hump and part of the legend above but one is offset father than the other so there really are few letters that overlap (a hook like lower case r over the hump followed by what looks a bit like 14). The horse side shows mostly the rump but one coin shows the tail to the left better. I would imagine that one could assemble a dozen of these and get all of the die detail a little part at a time.

I bought most of my bull/horseman coins from a pickout lot a couple years ago and tried to get coins with pretty full detail and heads on flan. VK's coin is later than most of mine and earlier than my two very late ones so it has a lot more detail on both sides. Such coins are a lot easier to read if you look at the full detail earlier ones first. VK's horse rump still has three dots while the later ones dropped to one. His legend still strikes me as reading Samanta Deva from earlier days but style changes. If I had known then about the progression in flan size, I might have bought a couple intermediate ones from that original batch but I started with the better silver and better detail coins and picked up the Mahi Pala pair a year later when I realized I needed them to show the progressive worsening of the design. My page on the coins remains available but has not been updated. I am not inclined to pay the prices I see asked for some of these now. I still do not have a really well struck coin of any variety. Poorly struck coins are common; perfect ones do not seem to exist.

http://www.forumancientcoins.com/dougsmith/bh.html

 

Doug ... you fricken rock!!


No honestly, you always make the rest if us "wieners" feel a bit more comfortable about collecting coins from 2000 years ago!!!


=> thanks for that, my friend (and thanks to all of you other dudes that also make my day feel a bit more secure:

Ardy, Bing and "definitely" my main dawg "Batman/Dionysos" => with all of you guys at my side, collecting ancient coins is "an absolute pleasure")


=> honestly, I "love" you guys!!!


:cheers::cheers::cheers::cheers:

 

Thanks DS I did not know about the dots on the horses rump changing. Interesting stuff. :smile

 

:cheers::cheers::cheers::cheers: ​

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Wow ... my head hurts!! (Canada Day is always such a headache!!)

 

My main interest in these has always been early-middle issues. I have a few late ones from lots, but never really paid attention to them I guess.

 

That has been my problem, too. When a series has a period of poor workmanship, we tend to skip over it until we recognize that we need to cut some slack for these periods. For example, many Gallienus animal coins are raggedy while there are beautiful round and well made coins of his from Antioch and good silver ones from the early years. We might be slow to realize that it is hard to find a round and well struck hippocamp. Postumus has similar problems if you want to get his 'better' types. I bought 20 of these at $5 each - all selected (not random grab). I got multiples of some common types and traded one to a dealer who offered it for $60. What I did not get was a good spread of the later things so I had to pay more later for those Mahi Pala uglies than I would had I looked for the crude things when I had the chance. The dealer had a box with at least 500 of the things and was happy to have me sit there for an hour going through them.