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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;red_spork, post: 8046744, member: 74282&quot;]After 6 years of collecting the Roman Republic I finally bought my first quadrigatus recently. I&#039;m not sure why it took me so long but I&#039;m hoping it doesn&#039;t take me quite so long to add the next one. This quadrigatus may look a bit ugly, but it is special as an example of the only quadrigatus issue with a mint-mark: the wheat ear below the horses&#039; hooves. The wheat-ear(sometimes called a &quot;corn-ear&quot; or a &quot;grain-ear&quot;) is a mintmark the Romans used on multiple issues struck at Sicilian mints during the Second Punic War, however while there are multiple pre-denarius aes grave issues with mintmarks, this was the first silver issue of the war to have a mint-mark, a practice which did not become common until the introduction of the victoriati and denarii.</p><p><br /></p><p>These types were previously very rare, and Charles Hersh in &quot;A Sicilian quadrigatus mint: the issue with a wheat ear control-mark&quot; only found 33 examples of the type, including this example which is cited as 17b(dies O12/R11) but not illustrated. By my count, the number has roughly doubled since then, to about 60, but even so the type still only comes up roughly once per year and most of the new examples do not have a pre-MOU provenance which makes them difficult to acquire as an American collector. This example is a budget example in pretty much every way but I am quite happy with it and given my budget constraints, it is the perfect example of this important issue:</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1392833[/ATTACH] </p><p>Roman Republic AR didrachm or Quadrigatus(6.74g), grain-ear(corn-ear) series, 214-212 BC, Sicilian mint. Laureate, Janiform head of Dioscuri. Border of dots / Jupiter in quadriga right, driven by Victory - Jupiter holds sceptre in left hand and hurls thunderbolt with right hand; below, grain-ear; in linear frame, ROMA. Line border. Crawford 42/1; BMCRR Romano-Campanian 108; Hersh 17b(this coin), dies O12/R11</p><p><br /></p><p>Purchased from Martina Dieterle, 3 November 2021, ex Numismatica Ars Classica Auction 52, 7th October 2009, lot 768, ex RBW Collection(but not cited), ex Münzen &amp; Medaillen fixed price list 491, August 1986, lot 31, ex Morgantina B Hoard #94</p><p><br /></p><p>A note about the provenance: when this coin was sold at NAC 52 no provenance was given. I discovered this coin&#039;s provenance after a friend provided a copy of Hersh&#039;s die study on this issue, &quot;A Sicilian quadrigatus mint: the issue with a wheat ear control-mark&quot; in Essays Carson-Jenkins. In the die study, Hersh 17 represents the same die pair as my coin, which he labeled O-12 and R-11, and cited two examples, as illustrated below.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1392837[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>I was initially reasonably certain that 17b was likely my coin from the dies and weight but after a bit of digging I found a second example in the sales record from these dies that was close enough in weight to plausibly be the cited coin. Thankfully, [USER=44316]@Valentinian[/USER] was able to help me out. I have bought a handful of catalogs from him in the past(and I highly recommend anyone looking for books and catalogues check out <a href="http://augustuscoins.com/numislit.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://augustuscoins.com/numislit.html" rel="nofollow">his website</a>), so I suspected he might have a copy of the cited M&amp;M FPL and reached out via email. He came back with a scan from that price list, attached below, which is indisputably my coin and confirms the provenance.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1392838[/ATTACH] </p><p>[ATTACH=full]1392841[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>As always, feel free to post anything relevant[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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