[Ancients]Carrrrrrrrrus!...or maybe not.

I recently acquired this nice little tetradrachm from a source at my local coin club.

The portrait is quite similar to this coin of Carus.
However I looked on Wildwinds and couldn't find a match in the section of Carus.


Help!

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

I dont play with these since most seem to get bronze disease pretty badly from this era but the top coin is a beauty.

 

...and that leads me to another question, is this BD(and did I use the correct punctuation)?

 

From that close up it looks like just hard copper, which is OK and nothing to fear. Just to mess with it as BD could be underneath.

 

Not Carus. I'll give you a hint: the first letter in the obverse legend is delta, and notice the letters TIAN.

 

Here you go. It is Diocletian

Diocletian Potin Tetadrachm of Alexandria. Year 7 = 291-292 AD.
DIOKLETIANOC CEB, laureate & cuirassed bust right
ENATOV, L to right, Elpis standing left, holding flower and raising hem of robe, A in ex
Milne 5063

Around this point in Alexandrian Tetradrachms all of the portraits start looking the same.

 

Come on, man. You can't make it that easy on 'em.

 

Ooops. Sorry!

I like IDing these and this one is awesome!

 

It's a superb representative of its kind.

 

Yeah you don't see many with that clear of lettering on the legend. I recently sold most of my Potin tetradrachms because they really lost my fancy and I bought way to many low quality ones thinking they were awesome.

This one would fit nicely in though!

 

That is an excellent Alexandrian tet! Wow!

 

Vlaha is this your first ancient coin??? its a beautie, chunky coin too, very nice my friend...

 

Indeed, very nice!

 

Enatoy is 9th year. They wrote it out rather than using the numeral theta because theta by itself is a symbol of death (thanatos) and was considered bad luck until the Christians took over and changed the pagan superstitions. The OP coin is about as clear on the obverse legends as these get unless being Greek is a problem to you. Part legend coins of Diocletian are often given away by the extremely small o which is more often than not only a dot. My coin below is much more typical in terms of legibility but still very readable for these.

 

Ah thanks Doug. I wasn't paying attention and just pulled it from Wildwinds.

 

Very nice looking coin there!

 

Nope, I have about twenty others, mostly Byzantine.

 

Wow vlaha => man, that's a sweet, sweet, sweet lil' TET!!

=> great new pick-up!! ... ummm, it is a Billon/Potin Alexandria, correct?

Hey, small world ...

=> I happen to have a couple of examples of these Alexandria Billon/Potin Tets as well:



Carinus









Saloninus

 

Thanks, and yeah, from the resemblance to my Carus, I'd say that's a pretty accerate observation.

 

While not 100% effective, Carus portraits tend to show a greater degree of forehead exposure (baldness) that the others with whom he might be confused. This works for antoniniani as well but some of them position the crown in a way that hides some skin.