Richard Schaefer's Roman Republican Die Project - Now Online!

You're not doing anything wrong. That one is missing from the index. In fact, in the process of annotating my personal catalogue with the applicable Schaefer binder and page numbers, I discovered that out of my 28 Republican coins, 9 are missing from the index, including several of my favorites. (A 10th is also missing, but I found it in one of the actual binders, so that may also be true of others.) A bit surprising, given that my impression from the ANS blog post was that all but "a few" are covered, with one logical exclusion being Crawford 408, c. 61 BCE (the Piso L.F. Frugi [the son] Apollo/horseman issues, for which there has already been a full die study).

For anyone interested, you'll be disappointed if you look for the following Crawford numbers, because they're not there -- unless something went wrong with the indexing process:

340/1 Calpurnia Piso Frugi, Apollo/horseman (the 90 BCE issue of the father) -- which I didn't really expect to find, since I already knew that the son's issue was excluded.

363/1 L. Censorinus, Apollo/Marsyas the satyr.

384/1 L. Papius, Juno Sospita/Gryphon.

386/1 P. Satrienus, Mars/She-Wolf.

390/2 Lucretius Trio, Neptune/Cupid riding dolphin.

394/1 C. Postumius Diana/Hound running.

412/1 Roscius Fabatus, Juno Sospita/Maiden feeding snake.

442/1 M. Acilius Glabrio, Salus/Valetudo holding snake.

453/1a [and the variations thereof] L. Plautius Plancus, Medusa/Aurora & 4 horses.

In addition, Crawford 316/1 -- Thorius Balbus, Juno Sospita/Bull charging right -- is entirely missing from the index, but can actually be found in Binder 2, pp. 50-51, 54-55, 58-59, 64-65, 68, 70-71, 74, 76-77, 80-81, 84-85, 88-89, 92-93, 96-97, 100-101, & 104-105. (Crawford 316/2, a semuncia with a completely different design, is in the index; I took the chance of looking in the binder at the 316/2 page and found 316/1 nearby.)

Some of the missing ones I found do have lots of different control marks or control numbers. But not all of them. Of course, I have no idea how many other numbers are missing; all I know is that 9 of my 28 are not in the index. Still a monumental achievement, of course, and I can hardly complain about the existence of such an amazing resource just because it's not entirely comprehensive. I suppose I could blame myself for buying examples of quite a few large issues!

 

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It looks like I found a match to one of my coins in the relevant Schaefer binder -- not just a double-die match, but, I'm pretty sure, my actual coin. I'm wondering if anyone can decipher the notation on the photo in the binder; I could email Liv Yarrow and let her know that the notation isn't in her preliminary finder's aid, but I really don't want to bother her unnecessarily. So I'll bother all of you instead!

Here's my coin:

Roman Republic, C. Sulpicius C.f. Galba, AR Serrate Denarius, 106 BCE. Obv. Jugate heads of Dei Penates left, D•P•P [Dei Penates Publici] beneath heads / Rev. Two soldiers facing each other, holding spears and pointing at sow lying down between them; S above; in exergue: C•SVL•ICI•C•F. [Indication of undertype on right of reverse, causing loss of detail.] RSC I Sulpicia 1, Crawford 312/1, Sydenham 572, BMCRR Rome 1324, Sear RCV I 189 (ill.) 18.12 mm., 3.83 g.



And here's the image from Schaefer Binder 2, p. 33-0 -- the last of 7 pages of photos of examples of Crawford 312/1, with all the examples he had of this coin with the control mark "S" on the reverse. I believe the photo of my coin is the top photo, with a red background, of the two images that Schaefer links to each other as die matches. If anyone doesn't agree that this is a photo of my coin, please let me know!




I'm pretty sure that the first line of the notation says SEPT01, as in September 2001. Can anyone read the second line? I thought perhaps it said "ROMA," but it doesn't really look like that to me, and I don't even know if Roma was around in 2001.

Thanks for any help anyone can provide.

 

I can't fully answer your question but hopefully can bring this one step farther. I looked at several other pages of Schaefer's binder and found a few additional coin images with this very distinctive red background. All had a month/year so I do believe you are correct that the top line reads "SEPT01" as in September 2001. The second line reads "ROMAN" with the M and A in ligature. This may be a giveaway to someone more familiar with the auction houses and fixed price lists of that period. It certainly doesn't ring a bell for me. Hope this helps!

*Adding a comment to say that I agree your coin is a match to the reference coin with red background in question.

 

Thanks! It's certainly another clue. . . . I suppose it could also say "RONAN" with the N and A in ligature.

 

Another image from the same source (Binder 2, page 71).

 

Further thanks. That's really so kind of you to put in all that effort on this! I think it has to be either Ronan or Roman. I kind of hope it's not the latter, because I suspect that there were a great many dealers who used that name! If nobody here knows for sure, I'll email Ms. Yarrow and ask if she knows.

 

I have been in communication with him over the years about the Papius (RRC 384/1) types and he added a few of my examples which were previously unknown die pairs so I know he has been tracking them.

 

I have emailed Professor Yarrow about the notation on the image I found of one of my coins, and also conveyed the substance of your comment to her. It certainly raises a question as to why Crawford 384/1 is missing from the index, and, presumably, from the underlying binders (although I did find the Thorius Balbus coin, Crawford 316/1, in one of the binders despite its absence from the index). It is somewhat concerning that if the ratio of 9 Crawford numbers being missing out of the 28 I checked were extrapolated to the entirety of the 500+ different Crawford numbers, that would mean that more than 160 numbers would be missing. Which would be a lot more than the "few" mentioned in the ANS blog.

 

As I said earlier, if there was already a study done of a particular series, Richard didn't keep photos. So in many cases, issues with many control marks have been covered by other authors. So Papius, Fabatus, Frugi, Censorinus and many of the others you mentioned have already been recorded and cataloged by other people.

Barry Murphy

 

The two different Frugi issues I understand, given that those seem to have been the two largest in terms of the numbers of different dies and die combinations. (Even Crawford makes no attempt to list them all.) If there are people who have recorded and cataloged the others you mention (with photos rather than only descriptions and/or drawings like the ones on the plates in Crawford Vol. II), I'd be curious to know where I can find that information, if it's available online.

 

Thanks for posting @red_spork, an amazing resource - coming to it by way of CRRO is helpful, took me a bit to realize specific pages were annotated.
linked from bottom of the entry e.g. this T. Carisius.

I also took a while to realize that the index was below the notebook pages:

The images are impressively detailed as you zoom.

I am curious to ask how others would use this resource, other than as an amazing assembly of notes and example images for a specific type and as mentioned in the article from L. Yarrow and L. Carbone for quantifying issues. I can imagine a number of ways that the information could evolve and be made more searchable that would be interesting. I liked the die descriptions "Hammer S", "tongs more parallel",...

@DonnaML already demonstrated one use: added information about a coin you own. I haven't found a coin match - but I did find a double die match for the coin I decided to experiment with

to this coin (obverse die 3?, reverse die F). The same obverse also linked with Reverse B and possibly others...


Other things to look for:

• I haven't yet followed the path (sequence of dies?) suggested by a pencil START on p.88
  
• I have a coin that could be a fourre (not obvious other than a bit light weight) - perhaps finding a die match in these pages could add evidence that it is an official die?
• Find additional links between dies for an issue or patterns in the way dies are linked looking at patterns across issues

...
other suggestions for uses?

 

Most missing ones are control-marked. Schaefer has for many years been involved in Roman Republican Numismatics research, both actively and more passively providing scans of various issues for other researchers. I believe at least a few missing pages are due to current research into those issues with unpublished information on those pages. For instance, on Binder #7 page 148, you'll find a section at the bottom discussing hybrids:


This section tracked hybrids with obverses of Crawford 422/1a and reverses of 422/1a - a variety that Crawford rejected because the examples known to him were all plated(see two rightmost coins). When I submitted my example to Richard, he responded to me mentioning that he'd been tracking this variety for quite some time, and had a few other examples from sales that he believed were not plated but could not verify. My example was the first one that was actually traceable and which he could get more data on, so he asked me to do a specific gravity test. The result showed that my coin was solid silver, and not a fouree(and thus, it is likely that these other good weight & good apperance examples also were), and this tiny section of RRDP became the seed for a paper rehabilitating this variety.

I bet all of the pages will be published in due time.

 

Of the nine types I have that appear to be missing from the index and binders, 6 have control numbers or other marks, and three do not. The three that don't are Crawford 394/1 (C. Postumius), 442/1 (M. Acilius Glabrio), and 453/1a (Plautius Plancus). Whether or not that's a representative ratio, I have no idea.

 

The START seems to mean the starting page for this Carisius type – top left shows the Noble coin labelled Rev. A, Obv. 2. However I can’t find an Obv. 1, although two coins to the right and we find Rev. A, Obv. I (maybe). And so on.

This die numbering in itself amounts to the beginning of a die analysis, but we don’t find die numbers with all coins, so it’s no more than a start.

Ross G.

 

Indeed, the question is how to process this rather amorphous mass of data.

Presumably the ultimate aim here is to undertake die link studies of various types of interest. With the data in its present form this is clearly a pretty tedious process, particularly with large issues where the images are spread over many pages. Adding new images to the files is obviously another problem.

What is needed is a more automated approach.

Ideally the image for each coin should be entered as an individual element in a properly designed digital database, where each element can be annotated and updated as required.

A specially designed app would then be required to facilitate the comparison of images with the aim of assigning new and existing coins to appropriate sub-types according to suitable design features (along the lines already followed in the notebooks), and ultimately to search for die links.

Once all this is in place the tedious job of updating and analysing the corpus could be farmed out to the numismatic world in general, as envisaged by Carbone and Yarrow.

Ross G.

 

The red background is unusual. The only auction catalog I can think of that used a red background were late 1990s catalogs from Harlan Berk (for example, BBS 110). You could check there. Most Harlan Berk catalogs can be found on archive.org by searching for "Harlan Berk <number>".

You thought SEPT01 was September 2001. No auctions by firms starting with RO that month. The trick to identifying auctions, if you know the date, is to type YYYYMMDD into https://donum.numismatics.org/ as an AUCTION DATE search. September has only 30 days. It is easy to do 30 searches. I found Berk 122 but the firm was not doing red backgrounds that month.

 

This paper, was it ever published?

I own a plated example of Crawford 395/1 (Medusa/Pegasus). Schaefer binder 6 page 120 shows another fourree of the same "die" along with silver examples.

"Die" in quotes. Mine has the same die break as the non-plated example. At first I was confused, as no fourees are known from official dies. The fourrees or their die must have been cast from a genuine example.

 

For Professor @Liv Mariah Yarrow or anyone else working on finding aids, how would I find the study of a particular series? I went looking for Crawford 445/1, couldn't find it in the Schaefer binders, and don't know where to go next.

With Greek coins my technique to find the die study is not scholarly. I look for the type on acsearch.info and see what catalogers cite other than the standard references. I tried that with 445/1 and found a few candidates but I didn't know how to go further.

Of course, it is possible that 445/1 is in the binders, but I couldn't find it. I seem to be off my game. I went looking for 463/2, found some but but not my variety. I discussed it with @red_spork and he showed me exactly where it was even pointing to my coin!

 

Incidentally, what is the copyright position with all the images that Schaefer copied unto his binders?

Ross G.

 

Schaefer didn't copy anything. He cut those images out of catalogs he owned.

Many people believe that ancient coin images are not copyrightable because of Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp. The ANS is aware of that decision.