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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;John Anthony, post: 2317261, member: 42773&quot;]So I decided to drive into NY City yesterday as I was under a time constraint and didn&#039;t want to deal with trains. Going in was a breeze, but coming back was a nightmare. The hotel is in the theater district and by the time I had to leave, a veritable sea of humanity had gathered for the shows. I have never had to drive through such a massive milling throng. Then it turns out the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel was rerouted and my GPS knew nothing of it, so it kept sending me to roads blocked off by pylons. It was the Hotel California of driving, but eventually I found the entrance and escaped!</p><p><br /></p><p>At any rate, I had a great show, met ancientnoob and Collect89, had a great lunch together, bought a pile of coins, and give my sermon on Nabataeans to the ONS.</p><p><br /></p><p>Enough of the boring stuff. Let&#039;s talk coins. I saw a few wholesale dealers who had bags of coins. &quot;Oh, you want Apollonian drachms? Here&#039;s a bag of a hundred. Illyrian drachms? Here&#039;s a bag of two hundred.&quot; It felt like the gun scene from Matrix...</p><p><br /></p><p>[MEDIA=youtube]Y70vcs3oV14[/MEDIA]</p><p><br /></p><p>For starters, I searched through a bag of Apollonian drachms, about a hundred. I looked at every single one, but this is the only one that spoke to me...</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]467730[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>There are things you learn looking through hoards of coins that you will never learn by looking at the perfect versions of the types at the major auction houses. In the case of this series, the weights vary considerably, some on very small flans of less than 2g. This coin weighs in at a full 2.9. Also, most of these coins are struck off-center, particularly on the obverse. At least half of the coins I examined had only half a Medusa head. (Curiously, the reverses are generally centered. What might that say about the minting techniques used here?) Furthermore, one can discern quite a few different styles. Some of the busts are far more expressive than others.</p><p><br /></p><p>Out of a hundred coins, this is the only one that spoke to me. Both sides are perfectly centered with a strong, even strike. About a third of the coins had test cuts, so the fact that this one had a cut as well did not bother me in the least. It was obvious to me that it was <i>de rigeur</i> for many ancient Apollonian merchants to vet the authenticity of the coins they accepted in trade. In fact, a coin with a test cut is more representative of the series in my opinion, and this one only interferes a bit with the obverse device. I believe it adds an element of historical interest.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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