There are some important Roman Republican rarities from my collection closing May 1st; the full group is here: https://cngcoins.com/Coins.aspx?PAGE_NUM=200&PAGE=1&CATEGORY_ID=6562 I wanted to highlight a few of the academically unusual coins: 1. An extremely rare variety Decimus Junius Silanus denarius, discussed by Crawford, but not generally understood as a rarity: The wing symbol is an engraver's mark, which Crawford demonstrated by showing that on this specific die, the reins are held by Victory in the right rather than left hand, with the left hand only holding palm, and the whip ordinarily held in right hand is omitted entirely. He uses all these minor changes to the normal design as evidence for a specific engraving hand that he links to the rare wing symbol (discussion RRC p. 338). All other reverses have the palm branch and reins in the left hand, leaving the right hand free to wave a whip. The wing symbol is rare, none being illustrated in Banti or in CoinArchives. The only illustrated auction example I am aware of is Coin Galleries, December 2004, lot 417 (symbol misdescribed as an apluster, with no comment on the reverse details, sale available on Newman Numismatic Portal) = Birkler & Waddell, December 1982, lot 237. There are only three symbols: grasshopper (common), ear (rare), and wing (rare, and this symbol only occurs where there is a letter P on the obverse, whereas the grasshopper also occurs with multiple variable letters and with no symbol, as does the ear symbol). The taxonomy of this issue is complex. Crawford distinguishes between “control mark”, which in practice is A, B, or C for 337/2e (cf. Hersh, symbols manuscript in the ANS), but in contrast for 337/2f only the letter “P”, which by implication he doesn't regard as a control mark and therefore must stand for something. As this is the issue where E.L.P. (“E LEGE PAPIRIA”) and L.P.D.A.P. occur on the related bronzes (“LEGE PAPIRIA DE ASSIS PONDERE”), perhaps the P stands for Papiria, though this isn't suggested by Crawford, Grueber, Babelon, or Sydenham. In fact, all say nothing at all. Bahrfeldt does comment in Nachtraege volume 3 (1918) and suggests (but without any discussion) that it stands for Publice – presumably meaning public money. A very important rarity, both due to the rare symbol as well as due to the different arrangement of Victory and the omission of the whip. 2. Brockage of the very rare RRC 405/1 anguipede giant type denarius The reverse die of this coin type, if one could see its impression, would have had an Anguipede Giant in a temple pediment. The obverses come with symbols, this carrying a staff symbol behind the head. Brockages occur in approximate proportion to issue size. That’s an attribute that makes brockages useful for rule of thumb judgements about the size of an issue. It is a lot easier to count a handful of brockages than hundreds of ordinary denarii, especially as brockages have the additional merit of being collected no matter how common the underlying coin type is. “Brockage denarius” provides 571 results on acsearch, mostly Roman Republican coins. A quick look through those results shows a preponderance of common types, but also allows you to determine which coin types, even though expensive, are, in fact, common. There are a dozen Julius Caesar brockages in available records – half of which are Caesar portrait types – and also several elephants and Aeneas Anchises types. Julius Caesar coins appear multiple times in the brockage record, because they are very common types – many thousand Caesar portrait types must be in the market for there to be half dozen brockages sold in the last decade. In fact, the search results ratio between “denarius” and “brockage denarius” is approximately 500:1. This Anguipede Giant type has had about a dozen examples sold over the last twenty years. It’s the sort of rarity whose numbers are so low that one never sees a brockage of it. I bought this coin because of this rarity factor and the illustrative story behind it. It would have been even nicer had it been a reverse brockage of that giant in the temple! 3. A Metallurgy in Numismatics 1993 cited Clive Stannard al-marco weight adjustment coin. Three coins in my collection have al-marco weight adjustment gouges that are referenced in the works of Clive Stannard: my Fannius denarius, RRC 275/1, is illustrated in Stannard's article in Metallurgy in Numismatics, Volume 3 (1993), pp. 45ff, pl. 1, 4, as is my Furius Crassipes, RRC 356/1, on pl. 2, 12 of the same publication. A third example, this coin, is referenced in the same publication (available at http://stannard.info/stannard_adjustment_al marco_of_denarii_blanks.pdf), cited as “private collection 3.90 g” (coin’s actual weight is 3.93 grams, but I’m assured it is the same). I thought it worthwhile to put this coin in the public domain with a summary of Clive Stannard’s 1993 paper as follows: “Ancient mints sometimes adjusted weights by gouging a sliver, occasionally slivers, of metal from the face of a flan, before striking the coin. The results are characteristic and easily recognizable. Examples in silver are known from Lycia, Paeonia (King Audoleon), Velia, and the Roman Republic, and there is a gold example in the coinage of Constantine I. The frequency of the use of gouging in the Roman Republic makes it possible to study whether weight adjustment was carried out al pezzo (which means that each individual flan was brought within the tolerances of the weight standard for the issue), or whether it was done al marco (which means not paying too much attention to the weights of individual coins, but ensuring that a fixed number of flans were made from a fixed weight of metal). This question can be investigated by looking at the histograms of large number of denarii, in issues known to use gouging. In al marco adjustment, a block of flans is cast a little heavy. The right number of flans for the desired weight of coins is counted out (and the overall weight will, of course be, too heavy). Flans that look heavy are successively picked out one by one, without too much attention to the weight, and a sliver of metal is gouged off. The gouged flans are tossed back into the block, until the overall weight is reduced to the correct overall weight. Figure at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/ahala_rome/3742991304/ models this process. As a result of adjustment al marco, the linked histogram is negatively skewed (the size of the upper leg has been reduced), and has high kurtosis (the center of the histogram is higher than a normal distribution.) 8,649 denarii from between 144 and 43 BC were checked to identify issues with gouging. 1.34% of all the coins looked at were gouged. The weight histograms of 4,587 Roman Republican denarii in the issues known to be gouged was negatively skewed, with high kurtosis, showing that they had been adjusted al marco. In these issues, 2.53% of the coins showed signs of gouging. A related Stannard reference with additional material on same subject is at https://www.academia.edu/1443037/We...co_in_Antiquity_and_the_Athenian_decadrachm.” [this summary Clive Stannard] 4. Brutus' last coin type, the Lucius Plaetorius Cestianus Ceres type, rarer than the EID MAR, part of the same issue and poorly understood as such. 5. First reported example of a Roman Republican symbol-type bronze being overstruck on any other coin Unpublished overstrike: this flying Victory sextans is the first known example of a “Rome” mint issue with a symbol overstruck on a non-Roman coin in the Second Punic War. Checking Crawford's RRC Table 18 shows a jump from RRC 56 (Rome, but no symbol) to RRC 63/64/65 (Sardinia) to RRC 69-72 (Sicily) to RRC 97ff (Luceria, et al). The record is entirely missing any overstrikes outside the war zones of Sicily, Apulia, or Sardinia except anonymous issues. The undertype is also intriguing – on the obverse under Mercury's chin one sees a very clear letter T (though this may be a design element) adjacent to a segment of crest; above the T there is a run of dots. The overtype is in exactly the correct style of a RRC 61/6 sextans – there's no possibility of a misreading or of Victory being part of an undertype, and the overtype die form resulting in a slightly concave reverse is also normal for the Victory type – differing, for example, from typical flat dies in Apulia or Sicily. The undertype matches none of the usual Second Punic War undertypes – not Syracuse, not Sardo-Punic, not Carthage, not Rhegium, not Campania, not Acarnania, not Ptolemaic. The crest at the edge would match many Roman unciae obverses, but doesn't reconcile with a letter T. A brief check through Historia Numorum–Italy did not reveal any possible undertypes. Deduction of the undertype will remain a challenge for the new owner, however, one additional point of context is worth sharing: this coin came in a group that included CNG E-432, lots 210 and 211, the six other coins being from Sicily, and that also included the group of Sicilian sextans and uncia overstrikes later in this sale. This was the only coin with a symbol (Victory) in this group from the RBW collection excepting corn-ear types. Unique and important for a range of reasons. The remaining coins are here: https://cngcoins.com/Coins.aspx?PAGE_NUM=200&PAGE=1&CATEGORY_ID=6562 Grateful for any interest or indeed comments or questions on the coins having academic notes. Andrew McCabe
