I purchased a "quarter size" coin of Constantius II today which was labeled AE Centenionalis and after getting it home,I noticed that a few of my other coins of his which are smaller "nickel size" ones were also labeled as this denomination.I decided to do a bit of research and find out exactly which denominations were what sizes. As it turns out,Centenionalis was just a generic term for some of the larger follis coins and is basically meaningless.Constantius II himself issued a new series of 3 coin sizes (no more Dupondis,Sestertius,Follis and As) each of which appers to be double/half of the next size.In order to avoid confusion coin collectors have come up with a scale to describe these coins by size when the correct denomination is not known.It works as follows: AE1=over 25mm AE2=21-25mm AE3=15-21mm AE4=under 17mm So here are photos of three of the sizes AE1-AE3 all of the "soldier spearing horseman" series of Constantius II from various mints.The large one is today's buy. This was fast research so corrections are welcome from you other Roman nuts.
Just to throw a little more into the ring. You'll sometimes see the coins described as AE followed by the size in mm (for example AE22 = 22mm). This is most often seen with Greeks, but carries over to Roman's too depending on the dealer or collector you're dealing with. Doug Smith's got a handy little page on Roman denominations with pics... http://dougsmith.ancients.info/denom.html
Thanks Brian, That was one of the sites I found while doing my "homework".It sheds a lot of light on the subject. On another note,as you might have guessed,this thread should have been titled "Sizes Of BRONZE Roman Coins". One more thing...your collection is stunning,at least the ones you have posted on Ancients.info,beautiful perfect strikes all!
Thanks Unfortunately that's most of the collection at this point. It's tough & sometimes expensive to find the quality I seem to "need" so it's slow going.
