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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Roman Collector, post: 3786670, member: 75937&quot;]That&#039;s a nice coin and I have no reason to doubt its authenticity. It is indeed RIC 1238. Here&#039;s page 174 of RIC 3:</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1011138[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>The obverse inscription description is CAE-SAR <i><b>not</b></i> because that&#039;s where the break &quot;should&quot; be, but because there wasn&#039;t enough space in the column to break it elsewhere. In the Antonine period, there is a lot of variation in the spacing between letters on inscriptions and, as far as we know, these lettering variants are not associated with different issues, different officinae, different mints, etc. RIC and Sear do not distinguish between catalog listings in coins with different breaks in the inscriptions on either the obverse or reverse. </p><p><br /></p><p>In coins of the post-Constantine era, these differences are often significant, however, and may indicate different issues.</p><p><br /></p><p>The British Museum does describe the breaks in the inscriptions on the coins of their collection, simply to be complete in their description, but they do not note any significance to such breaks other than identifying them as being from different dies. Here&#039;s page 227 of BMCRE4:</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1011139[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>You&#039;ll see that three of the four specimens in the British Museum have the CAE-SAR break and one has the CAESAR-AVG break. Yours happens to be different. The British Museum specimens each have variations in the spacing of the letters in the reverse inscription. Moreover, the candelabrum on the reverse varies a lot in design between them. This, for example, is the candelabrum/altar on <a href="https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=3172085&amp;partId=1&amp;searchText=Aurelius+1238&amp;page=1" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=3172085&amp;partId=1&amp;searchText=Aurelius+1238&amp;page=1" rel="nofollow">BMCRE 1408</a>:</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1011140[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>You&#039;re free to collect how you wish, but few collectors insist on collecting the subtypes of these. All but the most OCD Antonine specialist would list this as RIC 1238, BMC 1407-10, Sear 4831, Cohen 393 and call it a day. </p><p><br /></p><p>I think your coin is dupondius, because of the orichalcum color, but (as [USER=19463]@dougsmit[/USER] has aptly explained) you can&#039;t always tell. The British Museum describes BMCRE 1408 as &quot;dupondius or as.&quot; </p><p><br /></p><p>The weights are all over the map, and yours is lighter than average for the issue, but that&#039;s of no concern. I have Antonine middle bronzes that weigh in the 8 - 9 gram range. </p><p><br /></p><p>Enjoy the coin. It&#039;s nice![/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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