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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Marsyas Mike, post: 3183465, member: 85693&quot;]Along the lines with Doug&#039;s musings on Alexandrian mint products being exported (or not), I was surprised a while back to read in a couple of online places that the Cappadocian drachms of Trajan were (possibly) minted in Rome for use out East.&nbsp; I didn&#039;t know a coin with Greek inscriptions would be minted in Rome for &quot;export.&quot;&nbsp; But logistically it makes a lot of sense. </p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]820737[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>Something else I&#039;ve wondered about:&nbsp; a lot of denarii of Antoninus Pius, M. Aurelius, Verus, and Commodus (and their ladies) look &quot;Eastern&quot; or semi-Barbaric to me.&nbsp; The portraits have a wide side-view &quot;Antioch eye,&quot; the lettering is a bit crude, etc.&nbsp; And yet they don&#039;t look full-blown &quot;barbaric&quot; to me.&nbsp; And the silver looks too good for a &quot;limes&quot; issue.&nbsp; I&#039;m sure many of you on the Forum have an example or two. </p><p><br /></p><p>This is not a particularly great example, since the extensive wear &amp; damage make it perhaps look cruder than it really is, but I had the photo at hand: </p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]820736[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>Many eBay sellers from Serbia, the Ukraine, etc. sell these.&nbsp; I realize that &quot;eBay&quot; and &quot;Bulgarian forgers&quot; will immediately come to mind, raising the hackles of many on the Forum.&nbsp; But there are so many of these, in such a vast array of types, and with a great deal of what looks to be genuine wear, that I find these an odd thing to counterfeit.&nbsp; Some of the Ukrainian-Latvian sellers will even note if some of the coins they are selling are &quot;billon&quot; or &quot;limes.&quot;&nbsp; Furthermore, I found a reference or two in more scholarly works (I found from fishing around Google Books excerpts - I don&#039;t have the references at hand now) note the huge number of Antonine silver coming from these areas in hoards. </p><p><br /></p><p>I wonder if there weren&#039;t some sort of (official? semi-official?&nbsp; Barbarian?) Balkan mint operating around that time, with local celators preparing the dies?&nbsp; This sort of set-up might also have something to do with the extensive &quot;limes&quot; coinage that provokes so much debate (and in the same general areas of Europe, I think). </p><p><br /></p><p>Let me hasten to add that I am not an expert, and this is just the idle speculations of a rank amateur.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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