Hey everyone, as stated I'm new to the forums and I require a bit of help. First off if this is the wrong place to post this I am sorry. I recently found my fathers old coin box where he use to keep odd coins he would find. Its mostly non collector stuff with the exception of a few, and I was able to distinguish most of the coins in it, with the exception of this piece. The "research" I've been able to do so far suggests its roman but I can only find coins that sort of match but not a definite "this is what this coin is". So I'm thinking either I haven't looked hard enough or maybe its fake? I am a layman at best when it comes to my coin knowledge so this looked like a place I might finally get an answer. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Oh and glad to be hear, these forums seem great!
That is a genuine follis of Galerius as Caesar under Diocletian. It was minted in Ticinum in AD 298-299.
A little more about your coin: the ST• in the exergue and the * in the left field are control marks used at the mint. There were two workshops in it devoted to issuing Galerius' coins: Primum (P) and Secundum (S), meaning "first" and "second," respectively, in the Latin language. The T is for Ticinum; the dot and the star indicate different emissions from the mint (representing different years). Here is the listing in Roman Imperial Coins, volume VI, dealing with these issues (click on the photo to enlarge): You can see yours, with the obverse inscription MAXIMIANVS NOB CAES and the star in the left field and dot after the mintmark in the exergue, is 35b.
It's a start... If you really take to numismatics, you have a pretty broad set of opportunities. Just the coins range, as you know, from ancients to moderns. But even within that, you can find all kinds of subspecialities from books to paper money to tokens and beyond, from the Roman civil wars to the English Civil War and the American Civil War ... Whatever your passions... And we all have several...
