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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;dougsmit, post: 713776, member: 19463&quot;]Roman coins do not all get dated to a specific year.&nbsp; A common dating is just to give the dates of the rule of the emperor pictured.&nbsp; 117-138 AD are the reign dates for emperor Hadrian and has no relation to this coin at all.&nbsp; 138-161 AD are the dates for Antoninus Pius.&nbsp; This coin has three other points that allow narrowing down the date further.&nbsp; On the obverse we see IMP II or Imperator for the second time.&nbsp; This refers to the number of times the emperor was honored for his military adventures.&nbsp; Pius was not much into this and only accepted the honor twice.&nbsp; The last was in 143 AD so all this does is narrow the coin down to that date or later.&nbsp; Consul was the highest civilian office in the Republic but continued as an office during the Empire with emperors holding it whenever they desired.&nbsp; Pius was COnSul IIII times as shown on this coin with the last being in 145 AD dating this coin to that date or later.&nbsp; The good dating device here is the office of Tribunitia Potestas or TRPOT as shown here (just TRP is more common with most rulers who used this office to date coins).&nbsp; This office was renewed yearly.&nbsp; Not all emperors used the same date for assuming a new TRP number.&nbsp; Without looking it up, I believe Pius was one that used a date of 10 December so TRPOT XX would fall from December 156 to December of 157.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Many emperors held offices like these three but did not consistently mark them on their coins.&nbsp; Some Roman coins are dated by students who have figured out a pattern of issues and assigned specific types to dates based on the best available scholarship.&nbsp; My favorite emperor, Septimius Severus, changed the obverse legend style several times during his reign so we can group coins into early, middle and late periods even before we start looking at the numbers that some of them bear.&nbsp; Other rulers debased the purity of silver or changed weight standards during their reigns so we can date coins at least roughly by observing these factors.</p><p><br /></p><p>Your coin does have a reverse flan flaw and you are correct to be more accepting of it than you would be on a modern coin.&nbsp; Grading ancients is very much a matter of opinion since you might be more or less accepting of such a flaw than I would be while I might be more inclined to seek a coin with better wear or centering or any of many other things that happened to the coin when it was struck or in the centuries that have passed since then.&nbsp; I did a series of pages on the subject and whould be able to expand it today to twice that size.&nbsp; Grading is a subject that meets many varied opinions.&nbsp; How much more wear would you accept on a coin like yours that did not have the flan flaw?&nbsp; </p><p><a href="http://dougsmith.ancients.info/grade.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://dougsmith.ancients.info/grade.html" rel="nofollow">http://dougsmith.ancients.info/grade.html</a>[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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