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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Volodya, post: 2318284, member: 19615&quot;]Heh, I&#039;ve also joked about being sad because I can&#039;t collect Eid Mar denarii by dies. I&#039;m relieved to learn I&#039;m not the only one!</p><p><br /></p><p>Your question about the missing S in SC is a good one. I have several thoughts, none of which I find especially persuasive.</p><p>1. A filled die can&#039;t be entirely ruled out, but I agree we usually see <i>some </i>trace of the missing elements no matter how gunked up the die seems to be. On the other hand, this particular S is often unusually tall and skinny; it would take less to completely obliterate it than it would a more typical S.</p><p>2. We also can&#039;t rule out a forgery, ancient or modern. It seems an inexplicable blunder for a modern forger to make, but I&#039;ve seen things that are just jaw-droppingly dumb so you never know. The OP coin certainly looks ancient, but it&#039;s always hard to be sure on a coin with this much wear. As someone suggested upthread, the portrait style looks a bit &quot;off,&quot; but I think that&#039;s most likely distortion due to wear. An ancient counterfeit is a better possibility, but I can&#039;t enthusiastically embrace that notion either. Note to the coin&#039;s new owner: I&#039;m not really questioning the authenticity of this piece, just playing with possibilities. No need to worry!</p><p>3. The idea I like the best-- although still not all that much-- is that the missing S is simply a die engraver&#039;s error. There&#039;s a variety with no SC at all, so the engraver might&#039;ve got confused about which variety he was working on; lost his place as it were. Interestingly, in Gemini a few years ago we had an example missing the <b>C </b>in SC (although here we can maybe see the faintest trace of the missing letter.) I&#039;m confident that whatever explanation hold true, it will be the same for both coins. The Gemini coin, ex Randy Haviland Collection:</p><p><img src="http://pro.coinarchives.com/f634239bb004d705818222a1e25e29b0/img/gemini/010/image00390.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" />[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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