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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;dougsmit, post: 1271494, member: 19463&quot;]Tonight&#039;s coin show finds are three AE antoniniani of Gallienus&#039; sole reign.&nbsp; All have something to recommend them and none would be suitable if you were to have only one coin of the ruler.&nbsp; I&#039;ll mention what made me like each one.</p><p>[ATTACH]139288.vB[/ATTACH]</p><p>The first is the cheapest of the group and the most unusual in one or two ways that most people would care nothing about.&nbsp; It has flan cracks and reverse roughness which explains it being cheaper than the other two but it is not only from the Siscia mint but the coin bears a mintmark of the city letter.&nbsp; The vast majority of coins of this era with an S in the field will be attributed to the secundus (2nd) workshop using the Latin ordinal system of shop numbering.&nbsp; Here the S left of Victory is Siscia.&nbsp; To the right of Victory is a Greek letter gamma denoting the third shop using the Greek numeral method.&nbsp; Where it gets strange is that the gamma falls between the letters of the encircling legend VICTORIA AET (eternal victory) making it look like the last word was AELT.&nbsp; This is not a spelling error; it is just strange.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH]139289.vB[/ATTACH]</p><p>The second coin gets more of its appeal from condition and partial silvering but it shares a small bit of the strange situation above with the workshop number being a Roman numeral VI (6) also falling in the middle of the AVG ending reverse legend.&nbsp; This is nothing near as odd as the first coin because VI turned on its side does not look like a different letter so it is not confusing.&nbsp; Otherwise this is just a decent and ordinary Rome mint coin.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH]139290.vB[/ATTACH]</p><p>Finally is a coin from the popular animal series but it has serious problems from being double struck.&nbsp; Note the remains of a chin to the right of the portrait as well as a double G - one from each strike.&nbsp; The hippocamp is one of my favorite animals from the series and comes through the doubling with little problem.&nbsp; The legends suffer more but worst is the mintmark N which is an option in RIC but not understood by me.&nbsp; The other options are A, delta and S.&nbsp; While we are talking about N&#039;s lets mention the classic example of the Rome mint N of this period just right of the hippocamp nose where the N looks like III (Neptuo Cons Avg).&nbsp; Gallienus&#039; mints worked at a feverish pace to keep up with demand for these low value coins.&nbsp; Errors like this are not hard to find.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>I saw a lot of coins of Gallienus at the show. These were the three I liked best.&nbsp;&nbsp; He is the most common emperor of the third century and presided over the end of silver coinage that contained enough silver to look gray.&nbsp; All three of these coins came late enough in the reign that they were issued with a silver wash but only one of these still has enough silver to remind us of that fact.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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