I am so very thrilled to get at last something I had wanted and a nice coin all in one neat little plastic package. The coin actually is a very nice campgate of Trier mint with excellent left facing bust. The slab says MS-65 so who am I to question the word of the experts? The style is also quite nice. I assume it has edges but you can't see them in the dime size hole it was forced into. I hope they didn't file it round to fit. I suppose I might have found a better one or one not in a slab but this one is quite acceptable for the place it will fill in my collection. I just hope I don't drop it and pop open the seal since the value of the coin inside seems to me to be less than the value of the plastic case and coin combination. I do regret this is only a National Numismatic Certification slab because the same thing in an NGC box would be must, much more special to me and really a lot more rare than the C3 rating RIC gives this coin. The NNC website says they are no longer doing foreign coins (ancients?) due to the large number of fakes. Perhaps this one will be a great rarity someday??? The eBay seller actually had five such slabs on auction at the same time. I bid on all five but only won this one. Some of the others were coins I may have liked better but I was not willing to pay several times their unslabbed value to get one for this special use. I do feel a little urge to pop this out so I could see the edges and clean off the dust that prevents taking a decent photo. I have never before tried to shoot a coin in a slab so I will have to try this one again to see if I can get rid of the glare that ruins this snapshot. Will this first experience make me turn over a new leaf and buy more Certified coins? Maybe it will. Maybe I will see the error of my ways and have all my coins slabbed. Wish me well with this weighty decision. If, by chance, any of you see anything wrong with my new treasure, please feel free to break the news to me and also feel free to show me other slabs you may have that share the characteristic that made me want this one.
Don't feel bad Doug, that TPG is just plain crap. It is equivalent to an unslabbed coin for anyone who buys slabbed coins...
The above copied from an old CT thread tells a lot but I'm hoping someone here will take this ball and run with it.
Nope, but there are other curious things. That looks like a shield on the obverse. This type is not listed with shield for Constantius II (RIC 464). And it looks like CAESS on the reverse is a bit garbled, like perhaps AVGG was erased and replaced. I think this coin is struck from re-worked dies.
Only for a few years. I simply looked the coin up in Roman Imperial Coinage. I don't have that sort of stuff memorized, lol.
I should have guessed forty years although you did have me for a minute when you graded that coin 66 That was a good one.
My fath in humanity is restored. The coin clearly reads Constantius not Constantinus. I understand that some people have not been doing this for the length of time necessary to know the difference between brothers with similar names but those people should not set themselves up in business as numismatic experts. I do not claim that my few years spent studying these coins qualify me to rule on weighty questions of deep importance and I am not in the business of trying to get you to pay me for opinions. Here is a free one: Don't buy coins from people whose only credentials are that they own a slab sealing machine.
Actually, despite the whole slabbing nonsense, he sells some decent ancient coins sometimes, and at 99-cent opening bids. What Doug proves to us is the maxim so often heard among collectors of moderns: buy the coin, not the slab.