Featured I, Claudius, bringing a project to completion and an identification to confusion, then; dies.

You've done an excellent job in researching and presenting this topic.

While I would agree in principle that misattribution from major auction houses is a bit of a disappointment, I'm going to partially defend these as small, rather than major, disappointments. The volume of coins that go through major auction houses (NAC, CNG, etc.) in a year is enormous, and even those with the largest staffs would be hard pressed to recognize and research the level of subtlety that you've so clearly and thoroughly presented here. I've personally found small attribution errors in a few coins I've won at these auctions and, admittedly, I'm more surprised than disappointed when this happens.

In fact, I could make the argument that uncovering these types of errors are more the province of private, amateur collectors than auction houses. Many of the collectors on this site have contributed to expanding the knowledge and information about ancient coins, despite the hobby's being an avocation rather than their profession. Congratulations on being one of those collectors!

By the way, I've previously posted virtual trays of my 12 Caesars denarii and aurei if you haven't run across them yet:

https://www.cointalk.com/threads/12-caesars-denarius-virtual-tray.303859/
https://www.cointalk.com/threads/12-caesars-aureus-virtual-tray.303950/

 

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Thank you for kind words, Ides!
I’m not THAT disappointed in the auction houses, just a little surprised. A few illusions about the completeness of RIC fell too.
I’m no rich man, so I’m happy everytime a small mistake affords me a coin that is a little better than I paid for. I’m one of those jackals that search for Danish coins from the 17th century, hoping someone got it wrong with a rare Norwegian coin, and have gotten a few that way.

Your sets are very beautiful. The level of the silver set is where I hope to get one day, thanks for sharing.

 

According to RIC, both 10 and 12 are from the Rome mint.

 

My position is that they have to be from the same mint. If that’s Rome, that’s fine.
In that case nearly all of the sales of RIC 12 and most of RIC 10 have misattributed the mint.

 

that's why you should check the actual reference

 

I don’t have the RIC books myself. The new edition is on the buying list. I refered to RIC online, which has Rome as mint for all the denarii from Claudius. I wondered if that was wrong, or incomplete work, as other works (Sear for example) has Lyon as mint for several issues. I also find it strange that so many serious dealers and auction houses have had Lyons as mint for both.

 

First, that is an amazing coin @svessien! Just beautiful (and yes, I'm a bit jealous ). And great write up! I enjoyed it, and thought it would be nice to see what I could find in the two reference books, in paper, that I have: Sear and van Meter.

According to Sear, TR P I - II and COS II and IMP I - IV are dated 41 - 42 AD. The legend of your beautiful coin reads [TI] CLAVD CAESAR AVG P M TR P. So, according to Sear, that would mean your coin should be dated 41 - 42 AD.
Sear lists this type, with obverse legend TI CLAVD CAESAR AVG P M TR P X IMP P P (which he dates 50-51 AD). The mint of this one, is Lugdunum. See Sear 1846, RIC 52.

Van Meter lists your type as well, and with your obverse legend (ol/4, no. 8): TI CLAVD CAESAR AVG PM TR P. He dates it: 41 - 42 AD. He notes no mint, but does note that the type (according to him "the most abundant denarius type of Claudius") may refer to the suppression of a brief legionary mutiny in Dalmatia in 41 AD, or publicize Claudius' personal vision of Imperial stability through the hars suppression of all potential threats.

When searching Claudius RIC 10 on ACSEARCH, I got 20 hits. I have not checked out if there are any doubles or errors, but auctioneers seem to mention Lugdunum as well as Rome mint. I do not know what makes a coin struck at the mint at Rome or Lugdunum.

I am interested to see your digital by the way

And lastly, here's my denarius of Claudius. It's a posthumous issue by Nero.

 

The mint according to RIC though, is Rome.

 

I'll leave it to the experts to battle it out
Again, I do not know how to attribute the appropiate mint.

 

my first step, is to check the reference

 

So I took out my copy of RIC Volume I (Revised Edition) and reread your original post a few times while looking at the referenced pages.

RIC clearly states that during Claudius's reign "...it is to be accepted that Rome now continued the gold and silver output established there by Gaius..."

Suppose that, at some point years ago, this coin type was offered for sale somewhere (auction or dealer) and its attribution was wrong -- it stated Lugdunum as the mint rather than Rome. Then, as this coin and similar types were offered by other dealers and auctions, they simply copied the misattribution (not unlikely, inasmuch as most people wouldn't want to recreate the attribution from scratch) and the mistake propagated so that ACSEARCH turns up the coins with this misattribution. This would explain the apparent discrepancy, since whether the obverse legend includes or doesn't include IIII becomes irrelevant in this scenario.

For the few coins that I've acquired that have been misattributed, I've noticed that their previous sales (to the extent that I could find them) were also misattributed. Thus I think this is the most likely explanation.

 

Thank you Limes!
I was not able to find 20 samples on acsearch. I found 6-7, and some doubles, but as I got many irrelevant coins when searching, I searched «Claudius denarius RIC 10». I did a lot of different searches; «Claudius denarius Lugdunum» «Claudius denarius Rome», etc.
I’m thinking about setting up a provenance list for it, and see how many I can find. If it’s «abundant», then I guess I overpaid.
It’s when you try to get deep into a certain type and it’s different issues that having only Sear becomes insufficient. I want the new RIC books, as Sear has come up short with several coins lately.

I don’t know what makes a coin struck at Lugdunum either. The question that occured to me when researching this was «does anyone»?

Now that boarding is completed with the 12, I’m going to make a digital tray out of them and post on the thread that Ides_of_March linked to. Thanks for posting your coin

 

Most likely, I dont understand. But here's the specific paragraph in Sear, on Claudius' denarii. He notes only mintmarks of Lugdunum. And he notes the various RIC numbers.

Why would Sear only mention Lugdunum? And if RIC only mentions Rome, why - if Sear refers to the specific RIC numbers - would Sear still mention only Lugdunum? That is what I dont understand.
Number 1848 is the last Sear-number denarius. Number 1849 is a sestertius.

 

I agree with this. I have been thinking the same thing: What if I was to sell the coin, present the provenance but have another description than in the prior sale, how would that look?
Do you know if the RIC online and the paper RIC are in sync with the mints? As Limes/Clark says over here, Sear and RIC are in disagreement over RIC 52.
This is confusing, but this is how we learn, I think.

 

That’s the question, Limes. Thank you for digging into it. Do we know anything about the original sources for citing mints at Lyons for the coinage of Claudius? It doesn’t seem like the revised RIC has Lyons as mint. (Yeah, I need that RIC I.)

 

I did some browsing in the Sear book. He interestingly notes: "RIC attributes all the regular precious metal issues of his reign to the mint of Rome, while CBN prefers to assign them to Lugdunum. The latter attribution has been adopted in this catalogue."

Why, I wonder...

I must add that searching on ACSEARCH does not always deliver a accurate list of right coins, and it depends on what texts auctioneers used in their attributions: I used the terms "RIC 10 claudius denarius nemesis", and got 20 hits. Leave out nemesis, and one gets 148 hits. Add pax, and one gets 14.

I ofcourse do not know how much you paid, but take note that even though Van Meter states it's 'abundancy', he values the coin 'VB4': somewhere between 1000 and 3000 dollars (kr. 9.697,24 - kr. 29.092). It doesn't matter, of course. What matters is that you believe it's worth what you paid for

Agreed, Sear is by no means a complete reference book, and not intended as such. Most types are listed, but not the differences in, e.g., legends.

 

Sear explains this (page 363)-- RIC attributes all precious metal to Rome while CBN prefers to assign them to Lugdunum. CBN is Catalog of coins of the Roman Empire vol II by Jean-Baptiste Giard. So Sear follows Girard rather than RIC.

 

Can you imagine what kind of source material that has created this disagreement, Victor?
I take it you are on the «RIC-side» of the argument here.
Considering these two issues from 41-42 AD, one with the emperor and praetorians, the other with Pax-Nemesis, and how closely related they are to the initiation of Claudius’ reign, it is not at all unlikely that they were minted in Rome, to get the message out as soon as possible. Again: My only position is that the issues are from the same mint, as so many of them come out of the same die.

 

No, I am not taking a side, my position is merely if you cite a reference use that reference. So if you use a RIC number, your mint is Rome...no confusion there. There is a lot of literature on this topic and I am not familiar enough to argue one side over another...I use RIC though and certainly would not cite Lugdunum second hand through a Sear reference from Giard. There are other circumstances with disputed mints, this is not that big a deal, if you must, you can put different mints with different references. If you think this is confusing, start researching Postumus...I often just put "Gallic mint" for him. This situation might also be similar to the Postumus mint problem, what language do you speak? People that speak different languages might have different theories that do not gain traction due to the language barrier. Despite the language issues, there is a hierarchy in references, and though I like the Sear books and have all of them, I almost never use them as a reference, as they are far too general.

 

Agreed. That’s the sound policy.
As much as I like the Sear books, I see that I need literature that goes deeper into the areas that I want to dig into.
It’s still strange that so many dealers/houses have cited Lyons despite refering to RIC. That is what confuses me.