Educating Marshall - Discovering Ancients

Coin $3

This is a third coin from the lot. The Obverse appears to be a helmeted figure facing left. The reverse appears to be a figure mounted on a horse.

I believe this may be silver. It is about 20mm in diameter and weighs 1.65 grams.

 

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Hints:

• It is Roman Imperial
• The obverse portrait has a radiate crown (so the denomination an antoninianus)
• The coin is small, light, and has shoddy workmanship (although that might in part be the condition)
• Readable portion of the obverse legend: ...IENVS_V_, positioned such that there aren't going to be a ton of letters before that
• The reverse figure is standing/walking right, carrying/thrusting a stick-like object

 

Adding on to TIF's useful hints, you might try this Roman Coin Legend Search tool to help you figure out which ruler's coin you have: http://www.forumancientcoins.com/nav-srcaas1.asp

Partial legends work, so in this instance, where you can read the partial legend "IENVS", try entering a search for IENVS% and take a look at the results.

 

Gallienus, August 253 - September 268 A.D.
Pupienus, 22 April - 29 July 238 A.D.
Saloninus, Summer 260 A.D.
Augustus, 16 January 27 B.C. - 19 August 14 A.D.

Of these, Pupienus looks like the best candidate. The letter before I could be a P, L or T so perhaps Gallienius if it's a L.

 

Click on the links and you'll see a few examples of those rulers' coins. You'll want a larger group of coins to look at to better determine if your guess is correct, so I'd hit up acsearch.info. Compare the portraits that come up there to the portrait on your coin, as well as the placement of the visible letters on your coin against the other coins that come up in your search.

 

Right now, nothing looks close, so I'll keep searching. The left facing obverse appears to be scarcer than the right facing obverse.

 

If you were familiar with Imperial portraits, for this coin the portrait might be all you'd need to identify the ruler despite the condition. Identifying the reverse and other aspects of the coin's attributions would be a bit harder.

There used to be a Forvm-hosted website which had a typical Imperial portrait of each emperor. I referred to it often in my first few months of collecting. The link is now dead .

Oh-- it is hosted by Forum Ancient Coins and the gist of the pages still exists but has been rearranged and page URLs reassigned!

Here are links to all of those pages. I wish someone would put portrait examples of each emperor all on one page. Hmm, maybe I'll do that the next time I update my website, which is now more than a year overdue .

The Twelve Caesars
The Adoptive Emperors
The Severan Period
Crisis and Decline
Recovery of the Empire
The Secessionist Empires
The Tetrarchy
Constantinian Era
The Late Empire

@dougsmit has a website you should start reading. If you were to read every page you'd be well ahead of beginner collectors. There are still many pages I need to read and learn. Here are two of his pages I used often in the beginning, for purposes of identifying the deity or persona on the reverse of Imperial coins:

Roman Gods, Goddesses, and Heroes
Personifications on Roman Coins

Neither of the above pages are going to yield an answer for your coin though... the entity on your coin's reverse is a variation of one of the entities on those two pages.

Are you familiar with Wildwinds? That is another site which can be very helpful. For Roman coins ou can scroll through pages devoted to each emperor, which is a fine way to become familiar with their range of coins and portraits. On that site, go to Roman > Roman Coinage by Ruler. One you've selected a ruler, click the "browse page with thumbnails" link.

Note that Wildwinds also has Greek and Byzantine coins. The site is not a complete database of all coins-- no site is-- but people send the curator pictures their coins which are not yet in the database and over time it becomes more complete.

Other useful databases:

CNG's "Research" section, an archive of every coin they've sold since the early 2000s. Their search engine is fairly good.

ACsearch. Like CNG's archives except for a multitude of auction houses (including CNG). Disadvantage: to see prices realized you have to have a paid subscription. You don't need that info to identify a coin though .

 

For a decorative approach to emperor portrait identification, dirtyoldcoins.com has a beautiful poster. I have no affiliation with them, and I defaced the picture with their web address, so I think this is an acceptable post. If not, apologies in advance. I just really like the poster.

 

I appreciate the help. I apologize for my slow responses, but while I was gone to NYC to Sing in Carnegie Hall with the Singing Men of Texas, Amazon took over my search engine and I've had difficulty even getting to Google.

 

I'm the one circled in red on the back row.

Thanks for putting up with a little self congratulations, but it was a once in a lifetime opportunity.

Now back to Ancient Coins.

 

I am going to have to get back to these now. I've just determined a specialty I should pursue . While researching my genealogy, I saw that my ancestor Alexander Cleveland (or his son) claimed that he was the illegitimate child of Oliver Cromwell from his wilder days before he found Jesus.
http://www.angelfire.com/il/ClevelandFamilyChron/Cromwell.html

If this is true, I can expand my genealogy back to Constantine, so the Constantinian era would merge my interest in genealogy and coin collecting.

 

Many beginners start with Constantine and family which are reasonably priced in good condition. I suggest you start off with slightly better coins that are easier to read. Avoid rough and poorly struck coins in favor of ones with legible legends and smooth surfaces. You can learn to ID difficult coins later. My website mentioned by TIF is not geared to ID coins for you but to suggest things about ancient coins that might make you want to collect them. I believe it is better to understand something than it is to memorize facts.

I have several pages on this period but am fond of the one from which I pulled this image. On the page were 10 questions relating to the image of which the first was:
1-1. If the title of the image is "Constantine and his Sons" which coin(s) should be removed from the group? (Answer with letters A-T)
(click to enlarge)

Most people thought it was an unreasonable 'test'. I hoped people would take it as a challenge to study. How badly does Marshall want to be educated? The study of ancient coins will not be completed in your lifetime. Good luck (and get too work). Welcome to the journey.

 

It's good timing right now since my finances are tight and this is a good time for an education. I'd appreciate any links to your site regarding Constantinian Comparables and particularly information on denominations and their typical sizes and content. Since I've always preferred Early Large Cents (~29mm) and my eyes aren't particularly great, the larger size coins would be of particular interest to me.