Message:

<p>[QUOTE=&quot;John Anthony, post: 1878340, member: 42773&quot;]Here&#039;s another interesting proto-Nabataean overstrike. This coin was sold at a lower price than most, presumably because its disheveled features would make it less desirable, but its orientation makes it a rarity.</p><p><br /></p><p>The earliest Nabataean minters were generally very careful to align their dies with the Ptolemaic host coins: Athena facing the same way as Zeus, Nike standing in the same profile as the eagle. Obverse to obverse, reverse to reverse.</p><p><br /></p><p>But occasionally one comes across a coin which, for whatever reasons, is oriented differently, and this example is a dramatic one. It&#039;s upside-down and backward: obverse to reverse, reverse to obverse, with the new dies rotated 180 degrees to the host coin&#039;s devices...</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="http://postimage.org/" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://postimage.org/" rel="nofollow"><img src="http://s8.postimg.org/n9woa7k2d/protoorientation.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></a></p><p><br /></p><p>You can see the eagle standing upside-down through Athena&#039;s bust on the obverse, and Zeus&#039; locks are strewn across the bottom of the reverse, at Nike&#039;s feet. Nike did not make a strong appearance on this coin on account of a weak strike.</p><p><br /></p><p>It&#039;s definitely the sort of coin only a mother could love, or a wacky aficionado of Nabataeans, like me.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

Your name or email address:

Do you already have an account?

• No, create an account now.
• Yes, my password is:
• Forgot your password?

Stay logged in