Hey all new, hard to find info about this coin Septimius Severus P M TR P IIII - COS II P P denarius Pax
Septimius Severus Denarius. L SEPT SEV PERT AVG IMP VIII, laureate head right P M TR P IIII COS II P P, Pax seated left, holding branch and sceptre. Minted in Rome in A.D. 196 RIC 85. RSC 429.
This was not a good time for coin quality at Rome under Septimius. Finding really nice Pax denarii might take some looking. My two Pax denarii illustrate this even though they are different than the ro coin in that they have PACI AETERNAE rather than dated reverse legend and come from IMP X rather than his VIII. The first was better die work, really nice portrait but was struck on a flan with some slag embedded in the reverse. The second has lower relief and lesser style. I decided I did not need both so, after considerable questioning of the matter, I decided to send the first off to JA to sell. He failed here on CT and, so far, on eBay. Most people who want just one coin of Septimius prefer the later corkscrew beard style to this mid period type where the beard is just starting to fall into the three distinctive coils. Note the beard progression even from the ro coin to my first one below. This period saw obvious progression in coins of growing boys Caracalla and Geta but their father changed year by year as well. At minimum, a set would be three coins. More might make you in danger of being considered a specialist in Septimius and no one wants that!
I am not sure that they like the scrappy nature of some of the early issues either. This one differs again being PACI AVGVSTI. This one came as part of a lot of silver I bought recently. I need to figure out how to part with it and many of the others from the batch. Septimius Severus denarius Obv:– L SEPT SEV PERT AVG IMP III, laureate head right Rev:– PACI AVGVSTI, Pax seated left, holding branch in left hand, cornucopiae in left Minted in Rome. A.D. 194 Reference:– RIC IV 37; BMCRE 70; RSC 359
I have a Septimius Severus Denarius that I have been trying to identify. After a lot of searching I finally found a match for my reverse here on CoinTalk ! The reverse pretty much matches Doug's coin but is missing some lettering. . I tried searching through the Severan Period Section on Doug's web site but didn't see this Reverse . I think "the beard" is Rome mint type and correct me if I'm wrong but I can see a "X" on the lower right of the obverse. Is that the IMP X ? and how would you determine the year of the coin from this? Thank you !
IMP X was dated to late 197 AD and IMP XI followed in 198 so your coin seems to be late 197 or early 198 AD.
