I bought this Antoninian of Aurelian recently on Ebay. I thought the reverse legend would be the well attested FORTVNA REDVX. Instead it reads: FORTVNAE RED I know this legend was used on coins of Quintillus, but I could not find a second exemplar for Aurelian in my (very limited) literature. Could someone tell me the RIC number for this coin please?
I'm not the one to ask about the variety and such, but I will say that's a handsome coin with a really nice strike. Sharp!
Thanks, yes the coin is unusually sharply struck. I like the early (pre-reform) coins of Aurelian. They are often sloppily made from overused dies, but the old style is more lively compared to the post-reform coins. The coin was also surprisingly cheap. The reverse was almost completely green, which may have detered buyers. I just put some Ren Wax on it, which greatly improved the appearance.
That is a very interesting coin. It is MER/RIC temp #1387 and its authors suggest it is "probably a hybrid using a reverse die of Claudius or Quintillus." MER/RIC has only one specimen and yours was struck with completely different dies. I recommend you submit photos of your specimen to the database because it demonstrates it was not merely a hybrid created with a single reverse die.
Very cool. Many thanks for the information! I agree, if there are more than one pair of dies it is probably not correct to speak of a hybrid. Instead, this was probably an early (late 270-early 271) and small issue, perhaps with Quintillus dies that were still lying around at the mint. It would be interesting to see if the reverse die can be matched to an issue in the name of Quintillus. I will try to submit the coin to the database.
Claudius_Gothicus kindly provided additional information about the coin in private conversation and allowed me to share his last post, which I thought would be of interest to others as well: Claudius_Gothicus: "Actually, taking a closer look, your coin is actually a completely new type! It has the D1 bust with sleeve, while the one listed on RIC V Online is a standard D1. Truly a great find! (...)" I'm pretty thrilled with this discovery. For someone like me, who is kind of fuzzy about condition it is really unusual to stumble on something really rare like a new coin type for Aurelian.
Will do, but Claudius_Gothicus informed me that the MER/RIC site may no longer be maintained. I'll definitely try.
Fascinating coin! Let me know if you have any success. I've tried to add a few coins on there, but with no joy. However, they aren't new types (only ones where there is only 1 other on the site), so you might have some luck
