This coin is pretty similar to a denarius of Emesa: IMP CAE L SEP SEV PERT AVG COS II, head right, laureate SAECVLI FELICIT around moon and seven stars. Sear II 6361, RIC 418, BMC 390. The reverse is clear, but much of the obverse legend is weak. I can match it to the usual IMP CAE L SEP SEV PERT AVG COS II except for one thing--this one seems to end just "COS" without the "II". I ask @dougsmit and @maridvnvm, well-known experts in eastern-mint coins of Septimius Severus, and others to comment. Is this actually different? If you have a moon and stars coin, let's see it!
Ruler: Faustina I Coin: Bronze Assarian DIVA AVGVSTA FAVSTINA - Diademed, draped bust right SC - Crescent moon and seven stars Exergue: Mint: Rome (After 141AD) Wt./Size/Axis: 9.12g / 27mm / - References: RIC 1199 Cohen 275 BMC 1476
Hadrian ( 17 - 138 A.D.) AR Denarius O:HADRIANVS AVGVSTVS, Bare head right. R: COS III, seven stars within and above crescent. 3.3g 19mm Rome Mint Rare Published on wildwinds.
@Valentinian ... am I STRETCHING it??? PARTHIA Orodes II 57-37 BC AR Drachm 18mm 3.3g - killed Crassus pour gold - Ekbatana l stars crescent (moon) Arsakes bow anchor Sellwood 48.9
Forgot about this one. Commodus (177 - 192 A.D.) Æ18 of Philippopolis, Thrace O: AV KOMMODOC ANTONINOC laureate head right. R: FILIPPOPOLEITWN crescent and 4 stars. 18mm 4.5g Varbanov 1006
Your obverse die reads COS I. Or at least it did. The I has become merged with the tip of the bust over time in the die. Here is the same obverse die with perhaps a little bit of the I remaining and a MONET AVG reverse. Here is another example of mine from the same obverse die and the same reverse type. This time the I is still visible. My reverse has a longer legend - SAECVLI FELICITA I have the same reverse type from the IMP II series. To my knowledge it is the only known example of the reverse from that series and doesn't appears in any of the standard references. There is an obverse die that does appear to end COS.... but this is actually a COS II Regards, Martin
The following coin is not mine. It comes from the odd COS above. You can see two tiny little IIs under the bust. This is a moon and stars but with AETERNITAS AVS. A very sought after variations that normally costs about 20 times a SAECVLI FELICIT type.
Okay. I don't find this reverse with "COS I" in RIC or in BMC. So, yours is not in RIC or BMC either. It seems we have variants of published types.
Scanning through the coins contained on Barry Murphy's website, Doug's pages and my collection we would have an additional 20 COS I entries to the ones above. I think we could cover all those in RIC but this means most of the varieties we have between us would be unlisted in the major references. I did try a better post illustrating these but was defeated by the image limit.
When that nice one hit the market I was very tempted to buy it but could not see the price when I had the dog below already. The COS I matter was not understood back in the old days when they wrote BMC and RIC. All they could do was the two page footnote on pages 138f of RIC vol IV. I have a little trouble accepting this die as a full fledged II with those tiny remnants. There are other dies with full formed II with both strokes beyond the point of the bust, with one stroke and no sign of a second anywhere and just COS. I can not make the point too often that the 'rules' of Rome were not gospel in the East. They did it 'their way'. Yes, it is MFC. Those interested in more on this but who don't take their coins too seriously may read my wedding page. http://www.forumancientcoins.com/dougsmith/bride.html
Because there aren't a great many dies it is useful for those of us that way inclined to look for die links to understand how these issues work. This first coin is a COS I, IOVI PRAE ORBIS. It shares a reverse die link with Doug's COS II coin. In this way we can link the COS I issue directly to the COS II issue.
These coins are great for people who like to seek out die links. There are some that are known only from one die pair but more that share dies with other types as Martin demonstrated above. This shows that those two coins were made around the same time in the same place unless we can find something odd that suggests otherwise. One theory that will never be proven but that explains all the die links. What if (wild guess follows) that each day the obverse dies and the reverse dies were locked up separately and each morning they were passed out randomly to striking teams. After hours work would require cooperation between an obverse person and a reverse person. This theory makes sense when to see some obverse dies used with several reverses. The most I have seen is over a dozen but I do not own many with that obverse so all you see here is my set of six reverses used with the same obverse. I no longer believe this theory but I do not have a good one to replace it. If this were the explanation we should have more examples of one reverse used with several obverses. Lets trot out another wild guess: Each night all reverse dies in use were destroyed but the obverses were kept. That would do even more to prevent after hours striking but would require a night shift engraver to cut a replacement in time for opening. That one is too far fetched for me even. Better brains need to be storming before this one is settled. Where were these coins struck? Traditional wisdom placed the mint at Emesa. Some suspect a mint operation travelling with the army. If anyone knows, they have not yet tried let alone convinced me. We have to be careful not to jump to conclusions as to what our evidence proves as opposed to only suggests. The paper that figures this out will have trouble when it comes time for 'peer review'. Where will they dig up the peers? Being an expert in the Rome mint coins of any period will hardly qualify someone to follow all the oddities of this group of coins. The best we can do is wait for a hobbyist (known or unknown to us) to figure out the meaningful characteristics and identify the random happenings. One expert has denied there is any meaning to the one to three dots following the reverse legends of some coins (who here noticed them in the above samples?). I can not prove him wrong. Are there a similar opportunities for study in the coinage of other rulers? I can't prove that either.
The "die box" theory of minting has the obverse die firmly mounted in an anvil and the reverse dies hand held (with tongs). When the mint workers take a break (say, at the end of the day) they put the reverse dies back in the "die box," but the obverse die remains in its anvil. When the workers come back, they select a reverse die to use with their anvil. It is known that reverse dies, which take the blow of the hammer, tend to break more rapidly than obverse dies. (For large late Republican issues Crawford used the ratio of 10 reverses for 9 obverses, and in medieval England official records show mints were supplied with two reverse dies for each obverse die. Other ratios vary, but yield more reverses than obverses.) If the mint is small, as most Greek mints were, there might be only one die of each type used at a time. Then reverse dies were often used to exhaustion (breakage) before they had a chance to be used with more than two obverse dies (when the obverse die breaks, as it eventually will, the reverse die in use at the time can be used with a second obverse die but will rarely outlast that one too.) The "die box theory" can explain why several reverse dies (or types) can be used with one obverse. This idea fits mints so large that the production rate would warrant having several dies on hand, rather than having dies engraved on demand.
