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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Shea19, post: 3625936, member: 90981&quot;]I recently won this early denarius of Trajan at the last Naumann auction.&nbsp; This was minted in the first year of Trajan’s reign, and in the portrait, I think he looks an awful lot like Nerva, the emperor before him.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]972279[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>Trajan, AR Denarius. Rome, 98-99 A.D., (17mm, 3.22g), RIC 30</p><p>Obv: IMP NERVA CAES TRAIAN AVG GERM P M., Laureate head right./ Rev: TR P COS II PP., Pax seated left on throne, holding branch and caduceus.</p><p><br /></p><p>I love these “transitional” coins, and I’ve read many different theories for how some of these were made. I don’t think this was a situation where the folks at the mint just didn’t know what the new emperor looked like yet...this coin clearly has some features of Trajan.&nbsp; I think that the theory that applies here is that they were working on a Nerva die, but he died and Trajan took over before they finished, so they just modified the portrait to make it look like Trajan.&nbsp; I think that they decided that instead of throwing away their work, they could just take their Nerva portrait, give him a more reasonable nose and add in Trajan’s unfortunate Lloyd Christmas haircut, and now you’ve got the new emperor.&nbsp; If you look closely (not sure if it comes out well in the photo), there is an area of flatness by the bridge of the nose that could be from late alterations to Nerva’s most prominent feature in the portrait.</p><p><br /></p><p>For reference, here’s the obverse of my coin and a few later issues of Nerva (not mine) from ACS search...the resemblance looks pretty clear to me.[ATTACH=full]972273[/ATTACH] </p><p>[ATTACH=full]972275[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]972276[/ATTACH]</p><p>[ATTACH=full]972277[/ATTACH] </p><p>Interested to hear your thoughts and any theories on this one.&nbsp; And please post any of your “transitional” coins, or any relevant Trajan or Nerva.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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