Looks like am empress roman provincial with a settlement founding scene with founder being pulled by oxen. Best I have, sorry. Chris
It is definitely Julia Domna. DOM-NA is clear. The problem is the reverse legend remaining says METROP or Metropolis=city so the part missing told which city. Someone may recognize it by comparing to another specimen with more legend but it is not in my area of active knowledge. Not that many cities used 'city' in their legends so this will help in the search. From the style, I might start looking with Tyre or other Phoenician cities that did not have terribly great portrait artists.
Thanks a lot for the reply Doug, atleast I've been able to narrow down who the empress is but still can not find this coin anywhere! I am so interested to find out something more about it.
I tend to focus my learning of ancients on the empresses the most & I knew from the obverse it was domna and I have looked at all the main sources and public photo galleries of others collections and I too cant find it. Also doug are you sure its metro? It looks like MHTPO.
MHTPO is Greek with eta (H) being a long a sound and rho (looks like our P) the r sound. The word here may or may not be abbreviated from Metropolitan but we don't have enough letters to say what it read until someone finds a match. Compare this coin from city of Caesarea: http://www.acsearch.info/record.html?id=144551 MHTPO - KAICA Relatively few cities used the 'city of' legend but I don't have a list and still don't recognize his one.
I believe that is Greek for metro. I recognized the greek letters, which is why I thought from the outset it was a roman provincial. Huge area to cover, which is why they aren't as widely collected as imperial issues.
Unfortunately not. I have tons of ancients that were hard to find, (or I still have not found), that aren't worth a ton. That coin could very well be very scarce, even rare, and worth $25. If a coin is rare, but no one is looking to buy it, how much does it bring? That is the conundrum of a lot of ancients, and is very common with roman provincial coins. Btw, I am not saying its NOT worth a lot, just saying since its a provincial many times even relatively common coins are hard to identify since there are so many bloody types.
I now believe the coin is from the region of Pontus but do not find a good match in style for Domna. The obvious answer is Tomis but her online coin from there are more refined. The style looks a bit like this Pertinax of Tomis so I suppose it could be just a very early Domna die but with what we can see on the coin it is still a guess. At least Tomis used the cart type. Value still remains low due to condition. The Pertinax here is a premium item in any grade because his provincials are few and far between. Domna - not so much.
Yes, it is an issue of Juia Domna from Tomis. Not in AMNG or any of the standard (though woefully inadequate!) references, but one from the same obverse die sold in Gorny & Mosch 130, lot 1789. As Doug mentioned, this legend does appear under Pertinax and Geta. The GoMo piece sold for 140 Eur in 2004, so I'd estimate yours at $100-$150.
Okay, ebay seems to not be good to sell coins like this. What do people think this coin will fetch on ebay? I am selling this coins if anyone is interested?
