Newp: "Victory" series uncia and a review of Münzhandlung Ritter

The latest addition to the "red_spork" collection is a "victory" series uncia, struck at a Central Italian mint circa 211-208 B.C.. The "victory" series includes both silver(@Carthago recently shared an excellent denarius of the type) and bronze denominations. Some of the bronze denominations are relatively common, however the uncia that I'm sharing below is so rare that I was unable to find another example of the type on ACSearch, nor was I able to find an example in my library of auction catalogs. There are many such "denominational rarities" of this period where a few denominations are extremely common and others extremely rare, and I have not ever seen any discussion of the phenomenon in the literature, but my semi-educated guess is that when this occurred it was because the local populations near these field mints preferred specific denominations that were close in weight to their existing coinage and the mints were simply attempting to mint what was most useful. At any rate, I was very happy to add an example of this denomination of this interesting issue, even in its rather ugly condition.


Roman Republic Æ Uncia(5.10g, 20mm), anonymous(Heavy "Victory" series), 211-208 B.C., Central Italian mint. Helmeted head of Roma right. Behind, • / Prow right; above, Victory flying right with wreath and ROMA; below •. Crawford 61/7

While I am very happy with the coin, the purpose of this post is two fold: I would also like to review the dealer I purchased it from, as it was a dealer I had not dealt with before and had not heard much about from other collectors. The coin was purchased from Münzhandlung Ritter out of Germany. I emailed the seller with an offer about the coin on 4/15/2017 which was quickly accepted and I was given payment instructions. Within a day or two I had a tracking number and on 4/25/2017 I had the coin in-hand in the US, packed in a cardboard mailer with multiple levels of insulation and the coin securely held in place and protected. The dealer included the usual dealer tag and information but also the coin's tag from an old German collection which, based on the fairly outdated dating of "335-269 BC" I assume is from the earlier half of the 20th century.

Also included was a "Certificate of Authenticity" printed full color on heavy cardstock. I always feel these are a bit gimmicky and wonder how much I'm paying for them when a dealer sends one but I suppose it would help put a new collector at ease and I can't really complain because I felt I paid a fair price for the coin. Overall, it was great doing business with this dealer, and his attentiveness and quick shipping, as well as how well the coin was packaged makes him a dealer I definitely recommend, and I felt his photo(which I used above) was accurate to the coin.

For those interested, here's a scan of the cool old collection ticket. If anyone has a better handle of German than I do and can translate whatever is scribbled at the bottom or has seen this collector's tickets before, I'd love to hear about it.

 

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The bottom line reads "ohne Wertzeichen", so without denomination.
The name at the bottom is unknown to me.

 

Congratulations on the rare addition @red_spork and thanks for the dealer review. I love getting old tickets like this - they kinda make the imagination run wild. It pleases me when dealers include such material, as it exhibits respect for the coin's provenance. Many dealers (and collectors) don't bother storing such ephemera which can be a nuisance to keep organized. Imagine the reward, though, if you were to find your coin in an old catalogue or list such that you could identify whose ticket that was? I always keep old tickets.

 

Nice coin and thanks for the review!

Ritter is a firm I've always had good dealings with ... some of my best Domitian tets came from them a few years ago.

 

Nice rare addition @red_spork ! I have been very happy with my dealings with Ritter; sounds like you had a good transaction with them.

 

Great coin! It is neat to find a coin not in THE RR reference book.
R Russo published an essay on bronze not in Crawford in Coins of Macedonia and Rome, in honour of Charles Hersh. Your coin is not on his list.

 

Sorry if my post was confusing - this one is actually in Crawford, just not in most major collections of bronzes(I.e. RBW and Goodman).