Picked up 2 more Emperors’ denarii

Not long ago I posted my first ever denarius. One from the reign of Hadrian.

I said I was going to focus on the “Five Good Emperors” first and I managed to pick up 2 more.

Mostly because I have a certain respect towards how they helped Ancient Rome rise and thrive.

“Titus, Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus, and Marcus had no need of praetorian cohorts, or of countless legions to guard them, but were defended by their own good lives, the good-will of their subjects, and the attachment of the senate.”
- Niccolo Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy

"..the Roman Empire was governed by absolute power, under the guidance of wisdom and virtue".
- Edward Gibbon “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”.

Today I picked up Trajan & Antoninus Pius.

Now all that’s left to get is Nerva and Marcus Aurelius

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

Nice coins, any reason why you buy them graded?

 

Just a personal preference.

I’m a clumsy person and denarii are so little. It’s easy to drop them. Especially if I’m trying to hold them by the edges.

Even though NGC doesn’t “guarantee” authenticity it gives me some confidence knowing it looks ok from their end in terms of being authentic.

If I bought them raw I would probably end up with a bunch of fakes.

Especially since the 2 LCS I go to locally don’t sell Ancients much so I would be forced to buy online.

Plus it makes stacking them in my safe easier.

But I don’t ever pay more for one in a holder than one outside a holder.

 

Congrats to your new pickups, @Gam3rBlake

I was watching today's auction as well, but didn't win the coin I was looking for.

 

Yeah I know what you mean.

I had to set myself to a strict budget for these two and I’m super happy that I was able to get them within my budget.

 

Hi @Gam3rBlake, have you thought about how to display and enjoy your denarii after picking up Nerva and Marcus Aurelius? Maybe a coin slab box, or a Lighthouse Encap slab page?

I put my slabs in the Encap slab pages, so I can enjoy a group of nine coins each time.

 

Graded is a entirely unnecessary cost. Raw is sometimes half the cost as dealers know they can squeeze the GP for all they’re worth.

also, not to be rude but if you’re handling coins bare handed you really should have a cloth or soft surface underneath, and dropping isn’t a huge deal.

On a side note, I don’t know how huge your hands are but you need to be Shaq to consider a US cent-sized coin to be too small to hold.

the Greek collectors with the 5-mm coins are the ones with the real issues here

 

Those are a couple of nice coins. I'm like you in that I primarily collect coins that have been graded. I just like the piece of mind that comes with their safety and an authenticator giving the coins a thumb's up. It is nice to hold raw coins, too, so I have plenty of those on hand, but most of my nicer, higher-end examples are in NGC slabs.

 

Yeah I have a cool display box that fits 6 graded coins perfectly and I want to put them in that.

For the 6th coin I’d like to make it Titus or Augustus.

 

Well if that’s what you like then go for it.

Buy all the ungraded raw coins you’d like.

But please don’t tell me what I should be doing. It’s my collection. My time and my money.

 

They are two beautiful coins, but I'd like to ask NGC how is possible that the coins has been graded XF. Both show some wear, above all the Antoninus that even has some letters of the legend not perfect (check T and N).
So if they have in hand a coin really uncirculated how they grade it?

 

XF is not uncirculated.

XF is Extra Fine.

MS = uncirculated
AU = almost/about uncirculated

XF is right below AU so definitely not uncirculated but almost all details and some luster still present.

 

I was about to make a suggestion and then saw this...

Nice coins BTW

Q

 

Thanks! Yeah I was thinking I’d love to make Julius Caesar number 6 since he transformed the Republic into the Empire and Augustus followed him..

But then I saw how much Caesar’s denarii cost. Even in F condition.

 

I understand, I didn't know they use the "uncirculated" grading for ancient too, ancient coins come from soil so they circulated. It's a simple technicality, but it is subjective, I'm more in the old european grading school where the two coins appears as VF, the coin below a XF and uncirculated can't be applied to ancients.

 

Not all Ancient coins have been found exposed to the soil.

There was one case I remember where a hoard of Athenian owl tetradrachmae were found in a stone casket underneath a temple. They determined it was an offering to the gods of that temple. Finds like that in dry climates can stay in MS condition for a very long time if the coins are newly minted and sealed away like that.

Circulated means the coin has wear from circulation. Sitting in a sealed casket doesn't cause any wear.

 

Here are some better closeups.

I forgot how much some people hate seeing the slab.

 

Congratulations with these new coins in your collection.

Glad to read that you seem to know what you want and also how you plan the growth of your collection.

There is nothing wrong with graded coins, especially if you are buying on markets, ebay, and you are not so sure about the autenticity....

There are many to good to be true offers and even on High end auctions do appear coins which are counterfeited...

In fact will I let my Tetradrachmae's being graded and slapped by NGC as well.

Sometimes denarii with double portraits can come at hand to collect two import persons and pay the price of one coin!

This is a example of Iulius Caesar and Marcus Antonius Denarius. It's not like having 50 % discount, but at least when the Goal is to collect many important person's portraits does it not hurt your budget the same as if you had buy two...

 

I got mine from Heritage Auctions and so I’m guessing they also verify authenticity when they get it right? I mean like if they were selling fakes it would be a huge deal and HA sells them as real. I’m hoping they have their own experts double check to see if NGC missed something that proves it’s fake.

I do like the double portraits thing but sadly only one portrait can be seen when on display.

One day I’d love to have a display of denarii from 200BC when it was first made through 300AD showing the slow steady decline and fall in size and purity.

It’s like a metaphor for Rome itself as Rome was at its most glorious and powerful when they were making the big, bright, high purity denarii in the times Caesar and Augustus and it collapsed when debasement & corruption was so bad that denarii were basically little bits of copper.

I think it will look awesome to have a display starting with relatively large (compared to the later issues), highly pure silver coins then seeing them shrink and darken as the debasement takes place ending with tiny little copper coins.

All big, bright and shiny on one end and tiny, copper coins with a 5%,silver wash on the other.

Oh and your denarius is super awesome!

 

Yes absolutely!

At least the NGC slab says “It looks okay to us but we can’t guarantee it.”

It’s someone with more experience than me saying it.

Obviously they do check the best they can because I’ve seen them send back a lot of Ancients in body bags with no slab saying “not genuine”.

That tells me they at least checked the best they could and found it much more likely than not to be real. But no guarantees since stuff does slip by once in a while and they don’t want to be responsible.