Interesting barbarous imitation of a Roman Republic denarius

Hello list,

Wrong letters and style, it could only be a barbarous imitation of a roman denarius.

Any idea about which gens it pretends to imitate ?

Best wishes,
Jorge

 

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Just a guess ...but perhaps this one??? M Atilius Serranus???

https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=167915

@rrdenarius, @red_spork, @Bing or @Alegandron are probably best to answer that for you.

 

Volodya is an expert on RR imitations and will hopefully know.

 

The obverse at least is probably based on a denarius of Atilius Serranus. The reverse is hard to say, it might be but it may well be another moneyer or so far corrupted that you can't tell. It's not always possible to determine the exact prototype of these unfortunately.

 

Obverse and reverse are mismatched on this stuff often enough, so we're not going to be able to give a definitive answer. Sometimes there are little "clues" to point the way, but not this time. Despite the many exceptions though, the tendency is for both sides to imitate the same prototype, so M Atilius Serranus is as close as we're likely to come for both sides. I would catalogue it like this:

Types of M Atilius Serranus, Crawford 214/1, after 148 BC (reverse prototype is less certain.)

 

I would go with Volodya's description.

In 148 BC three moneyers issued silver denarii.
Cr214.1 M. Atilius Saranus
Cr215.1 Q. Marcius Libo
Cr216.1 L. Sempronius Pitio
For the first time their names were on both the obverse and reverse. All had Roma's head on the obverse and the Dioscurii on the reverse. The OP coin meets the first of these pretty well => the earliest date could not be before these coins.

All of the 148 BC coins had ROMA in ex on the reverse. The OP coin is not close. It could be the reverse was just not close in design, or it could have been trying to look like later coins with two lines of names below the Discourii. M. Baebius Q.f. Tampilus, Cr236.1, was the first to have a name in ex in 137 BC.
I do not know names with the letter combinations shown on the reverse.
from recent CNG auction