I’ve been hoping to get a visible Punic War overstrike for a while now, but it’s always eluded me. So imagine my surprise when I realized that this otherwise unremarkable corn ear sextans I got in the mail last week had a bit of visible undertype remaining, which the seller apparently hadn’t noticed. I noticed a bit of something there, but as soon as I got it in the right angle and light I could tell it was probably a Syracuse Hiero II coin with Poseidon (could be Zeus as well). A nice surprise, I think I like it even more because I was apparently the first person to notice it, even though there’s not a whole lot of it left. Forgive my photos. I took them in a bit of a hurry before heading out today. I’ll have to rephotograph it later. Obverse: Head of Mercury right, two pellets above (undertype of Hiero II in hat) Reverse: Trireme right, ear of wheat above, KA monogram on right, ROMA below Struck in Sicily 211-208 BC, 5.78g, 20mm, Crawford 69/6a
Excellent pickup! A good rule of thumb with these corn-ear/grain-ear KA bronzes is that they're all overstruck so if you see one, look for signs of overatriking. You can't always tell what they're overstruck on, but I've never seen one that I didn't believe to be an overstrike.
@ominus1, yes, that’s where it came from. I missed out on the identified overstrikes but this is a nice consolation.
Great job @SeptimusT ! These are fun coins to have. I went to a coin show and had a Dealer that had a reasonable amount of Ancients (albeit he was hawking US Moderns), that told me outright that this was a rare JANUS Roman Republic. For $30 I knew it wasn't, but had not learned about the massive overstrikes on Sicily during the latter part of the 2nd Punic War. RR Anon AE Sextans-Hieron II Error Overstrike 214-212 BCE Sear 1211 Craw 69-6 I am going to put this on ebay, right by the lady's Attica Tetradrachm, for $1,000,000.00. Newp: RR Sextans overstruck on Hieron II poseidon/trident bronze
This is a similar coin of mine by the way. It also went unnoticed by an eBay seller. You can see the trident from 7-8 o'clock on the reverse and a lock of Zeus's hair on Mercury's chin. Unfortunately the corn-ear and KA are both largely off flan but that's often a price you have to pay for the undertype to be recongizable
Never saw what's underneath this coin. But I think I now can see a lock of Zeus's hair too on Mercury's chin.
