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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;red_spork, post: 2515306, member: 74282&quot;]My post late last night certainly didn&#039;t do this coin justice so I&#039;ll try to answer your question here and give some background on how this coin fits into the arrangement. I&#039;m typing this from my phone without the luxury of having references in front of me, but I&#039;ll try and come back and correct any mistakes later tonight. First, a few notes on Crawford numbers: 38, 41 and 56 are the standard Second Punic War-era fully anonymous bronze series which include one or more struck denominations identified by Crawford, generally termed &quot;semilibral&quot;, &quot;post-semilibral&quot; and &quot;sextantal&quot;, respectively. Crawford arranges these by average weight but does not attempt to subdivide them in style, although later authors such as Andrew McCabe and Roberto Russo have for instance divided these into further groupings using primarily style along with average weight.</p><p><br /></p><p>The reason style is so important is that the Romans at the end of the day didn&#039;t care about individual coin weights much at all. Average weight can be used to build a bigger picture but cannot be used as the sole factor for determining where a single coin fits into the picture in many cases. For this you need to look at engraving style and weight combined. In the case of the 41/6e semis I shared the average weight for the type is about 30-40 grams and Russo further identified the fact that for the small number of known dies of these heavy semisses, the dotted border are always of greater diameter than of the lighter 56 series&quot;sextantal&quot; semisses. I believe the difference was something obvious, like the smallest &quot;post semilibral&quot; semis dotted border was greater in diameter than the largest &quot;sextantal&quot; semis border by 3mm or so - significant enough to tell the two apart. In addition these heavier semisses exhibit a particular engraving style which is different than any known examples of the lighter &quot;sextantal&quot; semisses, though this is a much more subjective criteria that is difficult for me to illustrate without photos.</p><p><br /></p><p>Now, how does my semis factor into this equation? It is lighter, considerably, than the average weight at just under 19 grams. It is however a die match to the much heavier semisses identified by Russo and factoring in wear and corrosion, the starting weight was likely at least a few grams more than its current weight.</p><p><br /></p><p>Like I said, I&#039;m typing this out quickly from my phone while drinking my mid-morning coffee, but I&#039;ll certainly revisit the subject either here or via PM later if you have any further questions. The short answer to your question is that at the end of the day, average weight and style are the important determining factors but I&#039;ll add a caveat that it gets more complex than that when factoring in certain overstrikes and imitative coinage and and the fact that as new work has shown, even within a given weight standard, further subdivisions can be found using style as the determining factor. While there has been a lot of good work done in the past two decades in this area, there is still more to be done.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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