The IVNs and I are working our way through a hoard of of LRBs that were sent to us by @tenbobbit . They had the great idea of sorting them out by varying reverses and then working through each reverse at a time. Not a terrible idea...but now we are stuck on one that as far as I can tell, we are reading correctly. However, in the resources that we have, can't find it anywhere. Is there something we are mistaken on? Does anyone have a good reference for it, if we are correct? We believe the obverse to say CONSTANTINVS MAX AVG The reverse is GLOR IAEXERC ITVS The mintmark is the hang up though : *SMKB* is what we are seeing but can't find a reference to it anywhere. Please help preserve what little sanity I have left!
The portrait seems rosette diademed. Mintmark appears dot SMHB dot. I think it is http://numismatics.org/ocre/id/ric.7.her.131
OMG thank you....I have been pulling out what little hair I have left (and there wasn't much to begin with) trying to figure it out. Why was I so hung up on SMK?
Is there a convenient list somewhere online of all the different Late Roman mintmark abbreviations? It would certainly be helpful to be able to refer to something like that.
I used to have one bookmarked...on my old laptop. But I'm working with a shiny new one and am having to rebuild all my bookmarks
I can't say I see a list of mintmarks helping in this particular case. The problem is that the way we of 2022 make letters and the way it was done 'back when' is not the same AND the letters A, H, K, M, and N are the worst offenders. (Not so???) Furry Frog saw a K which struck me as reasonable looking at the bend in that right upright. H and A alternate on which is closed at the top and the number of strokes in M and N are not always clear even when coins are high grade without deposits. Recently {Citation needed}, did we not here on CT have a coin previously read as HT for Heraclea Thracia reinterpreted as AT and called Antioch? Second officina coins Antioch at one point read ANB while Amiens' only workshop reads AMB unless the middle letter is crowded and reads wrong. The point is that we really need to pay attention to style clues for tips in some cases and to keep an open mind in every case. It is safer not to know something than it is to be sure you know when the facts prove you wrong.
you need to use Helvetica's RIC guides http://www.catbikes.ch/coinstuff/coins-ric.htm scroll down to "soldiers and standards" you filter the results and it is soon what the correct mint is.
Helvetica's spreadsheets are an extraordinary time saver - I use them multiple times almost every day! The key to attributing LRBs is to regard it as a multiple choice selection between alternatives that can be narrowed down by recognizing aspects such as type, obverse, etc. The spreadsheets are a very fast way to do this - not only to present all the alternatives, but to let you narrow them down by (as Victor said) using the filters to select any bits that you can unambiguously recognize. e.g. If all you are sure about for above coin is that the mintmark starts with "dot S", then you can enter that in the mintmark column filter and it will massively narrow the choices. In this case you'll see that the only mintmarks that start with "dot S" and also end in dot are from Heraclea, and you're almost done! Even if the mintmark may appear to start as "star S" vs "dot S", the spreadsheet will show that it not one of the choices available, and a quick scan of the options would suggest "dot S" instead.
Late Roman Bronze Coinage by Carson, Hill & Kent is a handy reference for mintmarks and quick attribution. It's the first volume I reach for when working up LRBs. I note multiple copies of the paperback reprint available on eBay for ~$20. Highly recommended. [Edit] I originally wrote that this volume cross-references to RIC. It's actually RIC 10 that references LRBC numbers. My mistake. Still super-useful, handy and concise.
