Reply to Thread

Message:: [QUOTE="hotwheelsearl, post: 7623299, member: 75143"]For memorial day, what better way to celebrate than to talk about Roman rulers who were memorialized! Roman emperors tended to opt for cremation, which explains why there are no extant remains of any emperors to have existed, with the tenuous exception of some later Byzantine emperors who were sanctified and have relics. Anyways, back to the coins... I recently picked up a whole bunch of ants at a local LCS, no less. The quality of the coins was superb and I was a pretty ravenous buyer. Claudius II was deified and issued a very large amount of consecration coins, of two main types:Flaming altar/funeral pyreStanding eagle The altar comes in a variety of styles and designs, ranging from simple square altar to wedding-cake style pyre. The eagle comes in two types, either facing left or right. Both types will spell the word in two different ways, either "CONSECRATIO" or a (mis?)spelling as "CONSACRATIO." By and large, these coins are small, miserable, low quality coins. They're often tiny, light, and bronze with no trace of silver and very poorly struck.They were also ripe for local imitations, leading to a variety of types shrinking ever closer to zero. So when we come across some of these consecration issues that don't look like absolute trash, it's very hard to say no. First up, my very first Consecration altar was from [USER=95247]@tenbobbit[/USER], and represents an extremely high quality version of the coin, although it's a little bit of a small flan but has great weight. The strike is excellent and the relief is high. You can see how the letters "V" and "N" seem to look like a series of vertical lines; this was apparently a typographic feature of this era and others.[ATTACH=full]1311746[/ATTACH] Milan RIC 26117mm, 3.2g Then you have this miserable little barbaric imitation I found in a metal-detected lot of coins from Spain. There is an attempt at a legend on the obverse, with "DI" being clear, but it's too small to have much else visible. The reverse text doesn't appear to resemble the correct one. The altar is okay but the portrait is awful. I love this thing.[ATTACH=full]1311747[/ATTACH] 13mm, 1.4g One of the coins I picked up at the LCS is this really glorious example here. The letters "V" and "N" are well-defined, and the altar is very well defined and detailed with accurate antefixae and a nice little flame. This is a tad larger but much lighter than the first example. Can't win them all.My favorite part is the rather barbaric 'stache on ol Clavdivs! Despite Claudius being known as having conquered that barbaric Goths, looks like he had a bit of that barbaric leaning in that choice of facial hair. The busy moustache is rather similar to the bushy moustache of the Dying Gaul. I guess he makes up for it with the Philosopher's Beard, or something. [ATTACH=full]1311751[/ATTACH] Milan RIC 26118mm, 2.2g[ATTACH=full]1311752[/ATTACH] Next up are the Consa/ecratio Eagle issues. These aren't super interesting, with only two types of eagles either left or right. However, they are very hard to come by in any reasonable state of preservation.My previous one was this awful one so small its hard to tell if it was meant to be official or not, although it is the same weight as the much superior one above. There's very little text remaining on the obverse, but enough of the "TIO" on the reverse exists to make me think it's just a poorly made official coin.[ATTACH=full]1311748[/ATTACH] RIC 26614mm, 2.2g This brings us to the last coin today, which is arguably the best. These antoniniani coins were originally made with a silver plate, best described as a "wash" and best described as "usually not silver, often tin or other shiny base metal."However, these consecration issues do not often exist with any amount of silvering left, much less the amount I have here on my second LCS coin.This is a stunner! There's probably 95% silvering intact. The coin is virtually as-struck with just minor wear on the high points of the reverse lettering revealing the pink copper core. It's very large, but light. Still, I'll take this gleaming "silver" coin over those tiny heavy ones anyday.I like to imagine how neat it would have been to have a bag of these shiny coins back in the day.[ATTACH=full]1311749[/ATTACH] RIC 26620mm2.8g[ATTACH=full]1311750[/ATTACH] Please show off your best consecration issues for Memorial day![/QUOTE]

Create my FREE Account!

Log in or Sign up

Reply to Thread

Useful Searches