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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;red_spork, post: 2440695, member: 74282&quot;]My latest pickup is a sextans, minted circa 194-190 B.C. with a crescent mark above the prow. I&#039;ve previously posted my crescent denarius, which is a common type from the first series with crescent marks. That series included a sextans as well, but the two are differentiated both by style(Cf. <a href="https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=1102091" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=1102091" rel="nofollow">NAC 61 lot 236</a> for an example) and by the position of ROMA, which is above the prow on the earlier series and below the prow on this later series. Like most post-Second Punic War sextantes, this type(as well as the related type mentioned above) is very rare: I&#039;ve only been able to find a total of 8 examples including this one and the ones in the BMC and the BNF Paris and Crawford himself only cited a single example in Paris.</p><p><br /></p><p>Unfortunately I don&#039;t know a full reason for the scarcity of this and related types. For whatever reason, the small change denominations of the uncia and the sextans begin to almost disappear right at the end of the Second Punic War. Many subsequent series of bronzes over the next several decades include both an uncia and a sextans but they are produced in incredibly small numbers and many are only known today from either a handful of examples or in some cases only a single example. This happened well before the retarrifing of the denarius to 16 asses, so it&#039;s not as if some sudden revaluation made these denominations obsolute, but for whatever reason the Romans saw no reason to produce many of them If anyone has any ideas or solid information on the subject, however, I&#039;d love to hear it.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]508519[/ATTACH]</p><p>Roman Republic Æ Sextans(20.4mm, 5.77g). Anonymous(Second crescent series), 194-190 BC. Rome mint. Head of Mercury right wearing winged Petasos, •• above / Prow of galley right; above, crescent and before, ••; below, ROMA. Crawford 137/6.</p><p>Ex. RBW Collection. Ex. Goodman collection, CNG 45, lot 1322, 3/18/1998</p><p><br /></p><p>Please, feel free to post anything relevant[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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