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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;red_spork, post: 4101267, member: 74282&quot;]I picked up this coin in the current Harlan J Berk Buy or Bid sale. I wasn&#039;t quite sure what it was when I initially saw it, except that by the style it wasn&#039;t the very common 44/5 it was identified as nor was it any of the other commonly seen anonymous issues. The excellent <a href="http://www.stevebrinkman.ancients.info/anonymous/index.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.stevebrinkman.ancients.info/anonymous/index.html" rel="nofollow">guide to anonymous denarii by Steve Brinkman and Pierluigi Debernardi </a>quickly set me on the right track, however, and allowed me to identify it as a type the authors call <a href="http://www.stevebrinkman.ancients.info/anonymous/index.html#H46-(a)" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.stevebrinkman.ancients.info/anonymous/index.html#H46-(a)" rel="nofollow">RRC 46(a)/1</a>. As I scrolled down, I actually saw the exact coin I was considering buying, pictured from an earlier Berk sale. That was really all the info I needed to confirm this was something really special. Knowing I probably wouldn&#039;t be the only one to spot this, I quickly hit that &quot;buy&quot; button. This was just in time apparently, as I later learned that another collector spotted this and tried to buy it right before I completed checkout, and two others said they would have purchased it without a second thought had they seen it earlier.</p><p><br /></p><p>This coin is special for a number of reasons. First, the type is a relatively recent discovery, having been first published in the anonymous denarius guide linked above and then more recently in &quot;The Orzivecchi Hoard and the Beginnings of the Denarius&quot;(more about that later). Its recent discovery is directly related to the fact that it is exceedingly rare: as of writing, four examples, including this coin, are known from two die pairs. Of those examples, only two are in private hands. The type is stylistically similar and probably somehow related to the rare <a href="https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=1102050" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=1102050" rel="nofollow">Crawford 46/1</a>, hence the aforementioned guide&#039;s 46(a)/1 nomenclature, but its existence as a separate issue, rather than simply a stylistic variety is suggested by the fact that the two known die pairs of this issue have no known links to any variety of 46/1, which Pierluigi Debernardi has published a die study for, and that several details on these two die pairs differ from the known dies of the 46/1 issue(see the guide above for discussion of style). Most likely it is an issue either from the same field mint as 46/1, but perhaps separated chronologically and engraved by someone working from a different prototype.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1066224[/ATTACH] </p><p>Roman Republic AR Denarius(4.83g, 21mm, 10h). Anonymous. After 211 B.C. Uncertain mint. Helmeted head of Roma right; behind, X. Border of dots / Dioscuri galloping right; in linear frame, ROMA. Line border. Crawford -; Brinkman-Debernardi website 46(a)/1, example 2(this coin); Numismatic Chronicle 174(2014), &quot;The Orzivecchi Hoard and the Beginnings of the Denarius&quot;, p. 85, fig 5.b(this coin)</p><p><br /></p><p>Ex Harlan J Berk Buy or Bid Sale 210, 6 February 2020, lot 116, ex Harlan J Berk Buy or Bid Sale 121, 10 July 2001, lot 266</p><p><br /></p><p>As mentioned above, this type was discussed in &quot;<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/44710184?seq=1" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/44710184?seq=1" rel="nofollow">The Orzivecchi Hoard and the Beginnings of the Denarius</a>&quot;. Not only was the type discussed, but my coin was once again pictured there, along with the three other known examples of this type and I&#039;ve reproduced the page here for those interested. As far as I know, this is the first coin I own to actually be pictured in the Numismatic Chronicle, which I thought was pretty cool.</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1066221[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>As always, feel free to share anything relevant![/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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