A few weeks ago I bought 26 uncleaned coins. I received 28 and got them soaking in DW quickly afterwards. I've been brushing them, along with other mechanical cleaning, and these are the cleaned coins so far. Not too bad, though some obverses are worn enough or missing legend and I can't seem to ID them yet. Additionally, some of them are pretty interesting types to find as uncleaned. Helena / PAX PVBLICA, Pax Julian II with spear & shield / VOT X, MVLT X X Honorius / Two emperors standing side by side Constantine? / Two soldiers, one standard, Chi-Rho atop standard Constans / Two soldiers, one standard Valens? / Emperor dragging captive VRBS ROMA / She wolf with twins, two stars Constantius? / Two soldiers, two standards Constantius / FTR Fallen horsemen ? / Emperor standing?
Pretty cool @Justin Lee - I've got oodles of similar ones, many of which I have yet to clean. I stopped after I had attributed 50 Constantius II FEL TEMP REPARATIO COINS, 49 of which were soldier spearing the fallen horseman and 1 of which was the Phoenix type. Constantius probably struck millions of those horseman types.
Yep, that’s about right for uncleaned batches these days. I learned a lot about fourth century coinage and history from scrubbing a couple dozen of those. That is a nice reverse on the first wolf and twins!
You got some pretty interesting types there @Justin Lee . Definitely different than the ones I have been getting.
That is a wacky Constans. His neck is long enough to rival some portraits of Aurelian... or a Pez dispenser... or a meerkat. I wonder if the coin is barbarous?
I will work on getting a few ready to post. I currently have 20-30 soaking in DW in the main bathroom downstairs. My wife is getting a bit tired of me having taken over the sink area for my coin cleaning
You can’t expect too much but those uncleaned lots can be a lot of fun. I like identifying these late bronzes. #10 seems to be a SPES REIPVBLICAE. They come in two flavors, Constantius II or Julian II. Without the diadem, it would be Julian. They look like this...
Your Valens attribution is correct. He's the only emperor from that time whose inscription read S P F AVG on the right. Nice score with the Helena. The Honorius is also relatively uncommon.
