Ancients: My 99 and 1/2 favorite coins posted

I received the coin that was holding up posting my series of 101 pages on my favorite coins so now I invite anyone interested in seeing the ancients I liked best at the moment I pushed the button to visit the index image and click on any coin (at random or selected with care) to see a write-up on why that particular coin made my list of favorites. Many have additional information about the coin and, time and mood allowing, I plan to add a bit more to some of them as well as to proofread what must be a comedy of errors. I should have more time because that last coin added from the last Pecunem sale should put me on the wagon for a while.
http://www.forumancientcoins.com/dougsmith/favs.html
There will be updates if I happen to buy a coin I like better than one of these.

The last added coin (#4 on the list):

"This is not My Favorite Coin. It is, however my most expensive coin and was purchased largely due to its relation to #1. My Favorite Coin copied the reverse from this coin of Pescennius Niger and details of that story have been told other places on my pages since the beginning in 1997 so I won't go into too much detail here.
You might think being my most expensive coin would be enough to earn a place on my list of favorites but this coin has credentials even better than that. Coins of Pescennius Niger range from scarce to rare. This is hard to explain since there are many variations and many types. Even examples that seem like they should be identical often show variations in spelling or the way abbreviations were executed. It is a bit unusual to find die duplicates since there are so many dies known and so few coins. The most likely explanation of this is that Septimius Severus demonetized and pulled from circulation all the coins of Pescennius Niger after his defeat at Issus in later 194 AD. Most of Pescennius' coin were probably in the hands of his supporters and many of them died either in the war or in the cleansing that followed. We have no records that suggests how this was accomplished but there are simply too many suggestions that there once were many denarii and then there were few.

This example is from 194 AD and shows a COS II date on the obverse honoring Pescennius' taking of a second consulship at Antioch in 194 in opposition to the one Septimius took at Rome. The two had each held their first consulship back in 190 AD. Recently there has been much discussion about the number and locations of mints for Pescennius denarii but this one, and all COS II coins, is most likely from Antioch.

While I said it is not easy to find die duplicates of Pescennius coins, I was able to find a nicer specimen online from this die set. That coin confirms the legends IMP CAES C PESC NIGER IVS AVS COS II / VICTOR IVST AVG. Most interesting to me (I feel particularly fortunate to have found this particular coin!) is the use of AVS instead of AVG on the obverse. My coin #2 on this list shows AVS on the reverse. Realizing that the die cutter was probably not literate in Latin and Greek has different forms to represent letters G and S, perhaps this shown not be a surprise. I will point out, however, that there are historical uses of abbreviations including the last letter of the shortened word so I can not be certain that this S is a simple substitution for the G.

This is not My Favorite Coin; it is not even #2 but it was the coin I bought last before posting these 99 and 1/2 favorites. I strongly suspect it will be quite a while before it gets bumped from the list."

 

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Absolutely "awesome effort!!"

=> super cool and very user friendly (bravo)

 

What I would like to see is a "Next"/"Previous" links on the page, would make for easier navagation. Right now I use the browser buttons. Ive only had a chance to read over about 2 dozen. Alot of fourres, errors & so on. All lovely coins and I can see why you selected them. Many would be ignored by the majority of us.

As usual the photos are excellent.

I plan on reading about all of them in time. But so far so good.

I doubt I could do 100 favorites. I havent even hit 200 total ancients yet :/

 

This deserves a bump.

Surprised there isnt more replies. Shame...

 

I've been investing my time clicking on the 99.5 coins & reviewing the stories. Every coin has a story. I hope others enjoy & learn from the link as much as I have (& I have many more to click before I'm finished).

Click this link people: http://www.forumancientcoins.com/dougsmith/favs.html

 

oh cool...new coin is neat...but the 100 fav coins set up is super. i've bookmarked and will be reading and viewing, tomorrow and/or friday.

 

This is a great coin combined with a great write up. I have wanted to add a Pescennius Niger to my collection for a long time. Their relationship to the early coinage of Sept. Sev. from Emesa being a large factor. This particular coin has many, many elements that make it attractive to those of us who collect the Emesa series. The AVS for AVG error is apparent on a VICTOR IVST AVS (sic) die from early in the reign of Sept. Sev. which calls up several parallels to Doug's coin.

There aren't many coin that I have seen of Pescennius Niger that have appealed to me on so many levels.

I have contemplated buying a Pescennius Niger denarius a few times over the years but none has ticked enough boxes to justify the price tag, which would have easily made the purchase my most expensive coin.

My patient search continues but I now have a benchmark to aim for. I doubt that I will obtain an example that is quite as attractive or as interesting as this one.

 

IMO the other Pescennius with the strongest tie to Septimius is the AETERNITAS with moon and stars which was relatively common for Pescennius but rare for Septimius. I admit I would have preferred the S for G on the reverse as it is on Septimius (my #2 on this list) but that is not known. My coin is unusual in that I know of another (better!) example from the same dies. The statistics I have seen suggest that there are many dies known only from one specimen which makes the discovery of new dies a real possibility. Obviously I would really like a coin that has a die link to a Septimius obverse (unknown to me). Roger Bickford-Smith owned a Septimius overstruck on a Pescennius which I really wanted but it was sent to the British Museum before his collection was sold. This image was made from a plaster cast Roger sent me.

For the record: My previous and only other Pescennius is one I have not seen duplicated with the reverse spelling.

 

Hi Doug => ummm hey, just for OCD neatness-points, I noticed that your new updated Akragas Trias (Triens?) pops-up when I click on the "old version", which is still shown on the 99.5 front poster (I just thought you might want to know, so you can tweak it and make it perfect) ...

Oh, and I agree with the others => I find myself coming-back to this thread and continuing to work my way through your top-99.5 (good times)

 

I was trying to sleaze that one by but got caught. Nobody wants that coin, not even the picture. Actually it has a at least as good an eagle as the new one and that is the side shown in that picture.

 

Definitely a awesome page. Must have been a lot of work mapping out the coordinates of those coins.

Will take some time to look through all those coins.

 

Excellent page Doug. I must admit though my favourite coins on your list are not the ones that are unique or have intriguing stories about them. They are the ones you just find 'cool'.

The most notable would be your Aurelian with the lion in exergue.

I love the sentiment in your first sentence. I am sure we all have those coins in our collections that aren't the prettiest but we adore. The ones we just can't help but enjoy.

Another would be your 'little lion'.

 

It's an impressive presentation. I'm also working my way through them one at a time.

 

A very neat coin Doug. I like the page layout a lot too, but agree with next previous and index page links being nice. I know though what paint it can be to go back and edit that many pages lol.

 

It is easier to balance the page if I used two words with the same number of letters so the first row now has Next/Last. I tried Next/Back and was afraid that Dis-a-way/Dat-a-way might seem like an attitude problem. Suggestions before I do the other 90???????
http://www.forumancientcoins.com/dougsmith/f04.html

 

Previous/Next .... Last doesn't quite work (to me)

"or"

PREV .... NEXT

BACK ... NEXT

<= =>

Hmmm ... it is a bit difficult, eh? (dis-a-way ... dat-a-way is sounding better all the time!!?)

 

BACK implies from whence you got to this page so some would expect to go back to the mapped image or some link on CT where one of you gave a link. +1 and -1 would work but some people would not understand the number. I seriously considered using a small image of the next coin which really would not be all that much work except for a couple images which I made a different format than the others (like the last one showing all those Nemausus variations).

 

I think my vote is for:

<= PREV ... NEXT =>

 

http://www.forumancientcoins.com/dougsmith/f02.html

This is one with a picture set. Worth the effort? I don't like PREV (and I don't like text lingo either).

 

I like that very much.