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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;dougsmit, post: 2860968, member: 19463&quot;]I went to a coin show Friday and the usual suspects followed me home.&nbsp; Some were half decent coins but not high enough grade to attract most people.&nbsp; Some were interesting enough I was willing to forgive their faults.&nbsp; Some were just mistakes caused by my desire to justify driving over 150 miles to attend the show.&nbsp; This first coin is in a category yet to be determined.&nbsp; I need help understanding what I see or, perhaps seeing what is there. </p><p><br /></p><p>Here is what I see and/or &#039;know&#039;. </p><p>[ATTACH=full]681250[/ATTACH]</p><p>The coin is a mess.&nbsp; The flan is poor for a 193 AD Septimius Severus Legionary denarius with porosity and blotchy color ruining any chance the seller had of selling the coin to anyone but me.&nbsp; He had known me for 30 years so there was no hiding that and we both knew it.</p><p><br /></p><p>The seller read the reverse as LEG VII ITALL / TRP COS.&nbsp; I am a little bothered by the first L being a little C-like and do note that the tops of some letters are off flan, that some letters are a bit different in &#039;font&#039; and there are no coins known that read with that legend.&nbsp; Other than that, I&#039;m OK with his attribution.&nbsp; My &#039;tradiditionally oriented&#039; mind says that LEG VII coins should read LEG VII CL / TRP COS.&nbsp; If I look at that next to last L, I could accept it as the lower part of the expected C but that fails to explain the mess the seller read as ITA. </p><p><br /></p><p>Looking at the obverse is similarly confusing to me.&nbsp; Legionary obverses should read IMP CAE L SEPT SEV PERT AVG.&nbsp; With imagination I see T SEV PERT ---maybe.&nbsp; Past the PERT or upside down at the bottom of the coin are come other letters which I will not give here because i do not want to pollute your mind with a mixture of what I see and what I imagine.&nbsp; The portrait is a little strange for a LEG VII from Rome but neither of the Eastern mints issued coins for VII.&nbsp; Their LEG VIII coins have AVG following the numeral and I can not see those letters on the reverse.&nbsp; The portrait has a little Eastern flavor - perhaps even a little Alexandrian but that is my imagination.&nbsp; Of course I would love to find a previously unknown legionary variety but my earlier observation that the L of LEG was curved keeps open the chance of the coin being barbarous.&nbsp; Scholars readily dismiss anything thy can as barbarous and they may be right.</p><p><br /></p><p>The coin I would most love to own was in the collection of my late friend Roger Bickford-Smith and was last seen in storage at the British Museum.&nbsp; It was a denarius of Septimius Severus overstruck on an earlier denarius showing only the letters CPESC&nbsp; from the undertype.&nbsp; Those letters are enough to ID the undertype as a Pescennius Niger.&nbsp; I would love to be able to demonstrate this coin was struck over an earlier coin of anyone.&nbsp; That the undertype here might be a Niger would be a dream.&nbsp; Now we are back to the question of what letters we see on obverse and reverse that contributed to the confused reading and whether those letters were from these dies or are evidence of an undertype.&nbsp; This is the hobby as I know it.&nbsp; Will this coin be a favorite or just another mistake I made at a show?[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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