Greetings. Delving into my coins again after a long vacation in Ireland. Amazing history in every corner of the island. Didn't dig up any Celtic coins though. Too many sheep distracting you. Coming back to history and coins, I would appreciate some help in identifying this what seems to be a Ptolemaic or post-Alexander Greek provincial coin, but bust facing left. My search shows all Ptolemy coins with bust facing right. 13.82 g, AR 23.
Nero. AD 54-68. SYRIA, Seleucis and Pieria. Antioch. AR Tetradrachm (24mm, 14.46 g, 12h). Dated year 114 of the Caesarean Era (AD 65/6). Laureate bust left, wearing aegis / ETOYΣ Δ-[IP], eagle standing left on thunderbolt, with wings spread; palm frond to left. McAlee 266; Prieur 91; RPC I 4191.
I hope you don't introduce a quiz for members to identify faces of Roman emperors before I study them more. As an amateur I got many of them down already but still a lot to go as I tackle my inventory of coins.
He I got a left one and right one...just went true my coins again, puff I have a lot...some I forgot about...
As I get older I find my memory for names and faces of people I meet becoming more a problem for me. However my long term memory of over a hundred'old friends' whose faces I only know from coins experienced over the last 50+ years is still going strong. I'm not claiming familiarity with many late Romans whose coins are barely human looking or tend to look alike but faces like Nero (young, old, Provincial, Imperial) are things we tend to learn at least as well as some of our cousins who live out of town. I, too, only have a right facer from Antioch but there are lefties from Alexandria (with Tiberius right) and Macedon. I note on our Antioch coins that the 'NERO' part of the legend is at the left of the left facer and at the right of the right facers. I wonder if that is consistent.
Just a word to new folks: When you are asking for help, give what you can in the way of information that might help us help you. If you call 911, you tell the operator the nature and address of the problem. If you call upon Bing and the bunch from CT, do not worry about giving too many clues or too good a photo. We, for the most part, are happy to help but (especially when I'm in a bad mood) fuzzy photos of one side of a coin (sometimes turned upside down, in a glare producing 2x2 or grossly overexposed) may not get quite as much attention as we should give. Did they? Maybe they did. This photo was good enough to suggest it was a coin but don't ask me if it is real or anything too complicated.
