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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;DonnaML, post: 7831231, member: 110350&quot;]It is interesting that it&#039;s still possible to buy four or five late Roman -- not even &quot;Byzantine&quot; -- gold solidi for the price of one decent aureus. I don&#039;t think the difference can be accounted for by the relative value of the gold content; it&#039;s a question of demand. Are solidi undervalued? I suspect that their price has risen less than that of aurei over the last couple of decades. Although I distinctly remember seeing gold solidi in antiquities/ancient coin stores back in the 1980s-early 90s for sale for around $200 apiece or less.</p><p><br /></p><p>[USER=111037]@Only a Poor Old Man[/USER], in thinking about what emperor I would look for if and when I believe I can afford a third ancient gold coin, my mind went to the same place yours did: why not buy a solidus of Theodosius I? But then I looked at both V-Coins and MA-Shops, and amidst hundreds of late Roman solidi (never mind the later Byzantines), including innumerable examples of Arcadius&#039;s son Theodosius II, there was exactly one solidus of Theodosius I for sale on the two sites combined -- for a price approximately three times what I paid for each of the Arcadius and Honorius solidi.</p><p><br /></p><p>Assuming that this isn&#039;t just a coincidental effect of what happens to be available right now, does anyone know why Theodosius I gold solidi are so relatively scarce? I don&#039;t get it.</p><p><br /></p><p>If that&#039;s the case, perhaps I could &quot;settle&quot; next for a Theodosius II, if I could find one that isn&#039;t too similar to the two solidi I have. (For reasons I&#039;ve explained before, it&#039;s unlikely that I would ever want to go too much later than the mid 5th-century in buying gold solidi. As many people know, I&#039;m Jewish, and at a certain point the coins simply become too heavily imbued with Christian religious imagery for me. I can enjoy and appreciate Christian religious art -- I&#039;ve seen more of it in museums, and have been in more European churches and cathedrals, than one could shake a stick at! -- but I have no real interest in actively collecting it.)[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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