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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Ardatirion, post: 693661, member: 9204&quot;]Wow! This has been a great year for me. Today I received in the mail a coin that I have searched for since I started collecting ancients. </p><p><br /></p><p style="text-align: center"><img src="http://www.forumancientcoins.com/gallery/albums/userpics/18271/Retarrifed_Vespasian_as.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></p> <p style="text-align: center"><br /></p><p><font face="Trebuchet MS"><br /></font></p><p><font face="Trebuchet MS"></font><p style="text-align: center"><font face="Trebuchet MS">Vespasian</font></p> <p style="text-align: center"><font face="Trebuchet MS"> AE As, 9.48g</font></p> <p style="text-align: center"><font face="Trebuchet MS"> Rome, 77-78 AD</font></p> <p style="text-align: center"><font face="Trebuchet MS"> IMP CAESAR VESPASIAN COS VIII</font></p> <p style="text-align: center"><font face="Trebuchet MS"> Laureate head left</font></p> <p style="text-align: center"><font face="Trebuchet MS"> Spes standing left</font></p> <p style="text-align: center"><font face="Trebuchet MS"> RIC II 1011</font></p> <p style="text-align: center"><br /></p><p><font face="Trebuchet MS"> </font></p><p><font face="Trebuchet MS"></font><p style="text-align: center"><font face="Trebuchet MS"> c/m: XLII carved to left of bust. Retarrifed by Ostrogothic kingdom in Italy as 42 nummi, 6th century AD. Morrisson, Re-use 19; cf. MEC 1, 76 (Vespasian).</font></p> <p style="text-align: center"><br /></p> <p style="text-align: center"><font face="Trebuchet MS"> Ex CNG 82, lot 1139</font></p> <p style="text-align: center"><br /></p><p style="text-align: left">In the 6th century AD, the Ostrogothic Kingdom in Italy began revaluing a number of early Imperial issues: asses and dupondii at 42 nummi (XLII) and sestertii at 83 (LXXXIII) nummi. If the numbers seem a bit odd, its because they functioned not as multiples of the nummus, but as fractions of the siliqua! These are pretty rare, with Medieval European Coinage catalog noting only a few hundred specimens surviving. </p> <p style="text-align: left"><br /></p> <p style="text-align: left">Here&#039;s a good article on them: <a href="http://www.forumancientcoins.com/numiswiki/view.asp?key=Countermarked%20in%20late%20antiquity" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.forumancientcoins.com/numiswiki/view.asp?key=Countermarked%20in%20late%20antiquity" rel="nofollow">http://www.forumancientcoins.com/numiswiki/view.asp?key=Countermarked%20in%20late%20antiquity</a> </p> </p><p>[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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