I picked up a few neat items this weekend at a local coin show. The Aes Teardrop arrived in the mail. Cast bronze teardrop. AES Formatum, VI- IV centuries B.C.; Eturia; 49 mm long X 19.5 mm wide X 13 mm thick. Vecchi, Italian Cast Coinage, pg 90, #7. I found a few similar, but different weight, examples on the internet. Please excuse the picture. The coin in hand is nice. It is one of the better condition ones I have bought at a local coin show. Roman Republican Denarius, 62 BC, Mint = Rome This coin was issued jointly by Moneyers Paullus Aemilius Lepidus and Lucius Scribonius Libo. Both also issued coins individually. This is a modestly rare issue with only 26 obverse dies listed in Crawford. The individual issues of these moneyers was much larger at 200+. Obv - Veiled and diademed head of Concordia right. PAVLLVS LEPIDVS behind & CONCORD before. Rev - Puteal (well) Scribonia ornamented with a garland between two lyres and a hammer below. PVTEAL.SCRIBON around. This moneyer places three different coining tools on the well base: hammer, tongs and anvil. Legend said that water started flowing from this place after being struck by lightning. I picked up a bag of low grade Widow's Mites. They make neat gifts. We had 25 youth attend our kids auction. We did not have ancients at this one, but normally have a few.
rrd => I've never seen those neat AES tear drops (they're very cool) Oh, and the RR denarius is also a sweet addition (congrats)
I have never seen an aes formatum teardrop before....NEAT!! Do you think it has been polished? I immediately ran to my ITC to look this up. Gotta find me one! I'm always happy to hear about kids getting involved in coin collecting. 25 kids attend a local coin auction is impressive!
There is an interesting blog on cast pieces here: http://blog.artemideaste.com/search/label/aes grave
