I picked up some interesting coins at NYINC in January. My wife paid me back by finding lots of yarn at Vogue Live a week later. Some pics from both are below. When you hear me talking about my big As. I am not talking about how hard it is to sit for several hours on a SWA plane. My new one is an Apollo / Apollo Cr 18.1. Roman Republican Anonymous Æ Aes Grave As Circa 270 BC. Libral standard. Rome mint. Obv - Diademed head of Apollo right | (mark of value) above; all on raised disk Rev - Diademed head of Apollo left; | (mark of value) above; all on raised disk. 319 grams 65.8 x 67.2 mm dia x 26.4 mm thick – this is a thick As! 12h Green patina, light roughness, minor deposits, edge casting flaw. VF. Impressive cast in high relief. Rare. Crawford 18/1; I liked the dragon scale pattern. The yarn producer has a deal with a fantasy author to produce fly or die yarn.
Very nice. There are some big Asses in the BM. I had an appointment to see them but ran out of time. To clarify, BM is the British Museum. You can schedule a time to view non-displayed coins they own. Good acquisition. I love the early As Graves and own 2 of them but finding such an early one as you have is not easy. I believe 270 BC is about as far back as they go: I don't think even the BM has any earlier one. What else interesting did you see at the NYICS?
I tell my wife going to a coin show is a bit like going to the zoo. I can feed the elephants, but cant bring one home. I have a few other items I will post over the next few days. I visited the BM in 2019. I looked at cast bronze in their back room. It was great! They had several pieces displayed also. T&V says the Janus / Mercury coin is the oldest. TV1 & Cr 14.1. It is listed a few years earlier than the Apollo / Apollo, TV8 & Cr18.1. The last pic shows the Apollo / Apollo on the right.
Thanks for the info. The T&V {Thurlow & Vecchi; Italian Cast Coinage} is really helpful in terms of sorting this stuff out and providing metrics. Your Janus / Mercury coin looks wonderful: nice condition and no casting flaws. Sometimes Artemede Asta, San Marino {sp?} carries things like this at auction. Where did you get yours? Do you have the weight? Weighing these things is difficult as they far exceed what most common jewelers scales are capable of measuring. It's really nice to meet another collector of these things: I find them enchanting but only have two.
@Gallienus - I had to buy a larger scale for cast coins. I found one online with two ranges 3000 g max (0.1 g resolution) or 500 g max (0.01 g resolution). That was good for a while until I bought big scale weights and then I used a bathroom scale. If something weights only a bit over my scale, I put a known weight on the scale, tare the scale, remove the weight and weigh the object. this bronze quarter cake is only 1440 grams, so the bigger scale works 2530 g cast bar the left weight is only 1400 grams, middle is 30.5 Kg and right is 5.7 Kg
