The Indianapolis Ancient Hoard.

This is not a real easy one but it is neither Philip nor Nike.

Lets start by breaking down the obverse legend which has a lot of abbreviations so I'll insert spaces:
piO lambdaI KOP CA OVAlambdaEPIANOC K CEB

I fail to understand the first since Publius should not usually have an O and this Caesar's older brother (also a Publius) issued similar coins with no O but it is expected. The two boys both had granddad's name but when spelled in Greek the name starting with a V usually gains a leading O making it a little harder to read. Since both boys had such similar names, the second one is usually known to history by one name in the string that his brother lacked and that is represented on this coin by CA. At this time in Greek history, the letter sigma was written as we write C.

The reverse is pretty common and shows the personification of the city of Alexandria holding a detached head of the god Serapis. Serapis always wears a head dress that looks a bit like he is balancing a vase on his head. One odd part here is the date L S or year 7 when the ruler shown here lasted well under 7 years. In cases like this, the date refered to the regnal year of senior Augustus or, in this case, the boys' grandfather and father that were co-Augusti until about the time of this coin when grandpa was captured by the Sasanians and never seen again.

Stop here if you want to figure it out from the clues. The coin might seem to belong to Valerian II, eldest son of Gallienus and grandson of Valerian I but he died before year seven and did not have CA or the O following the pi in Publius. These clues make the coin certainly of the younger brother Saloninus, 260 AD. It is a decent coin but someone deducted about half of its cash value when they scratched the reverse in the right field while trying to clean away some of the green encrustations. I don't know what it will bring but I suggest that most collectors that could appreciate it (or even ID it) would not be impressed by a slab.

In case anyone wonders, this is the kind of coin that makes ancients interesting to me. The ID is not just a matter of reading a date. Saloninus is about as inconsequential as Roman rulers get and died violently shortly after this coin was made. Michael Grant refered to the year 260 as the most disasterous in Roman history. That may be a bit excessive but Emperor Gallienus lost both father and son on opposite sides of the Empire and it was decades before anything approaching order returned to Rome.

 

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Dutchman, Don't slab it. We ancient collectors must feel the old coins for the whole experience of its history. Plastic (YUKKK) My humble opineeee. Traci

 

At this moment the only coins that have been sent to the plastic factory are the gold pieces. The rest are not going unless I find something pretty rare... and then it might be a stretch.

 

The Saloninus is the one I've been drooling over.

But the plot thickens... Emmett doesn't list any standing male deities for Saloninus... (unless he misdecribed "Sarapis bust r." with "Sarapis standing r.")

 

I do not own Emmett but I gather you disagree with my ID of the coin as Alexandria (female) standing left holding the bust of Serapis right? The full figure is wearing a crown of city wall turrets so I could see some calling her someone like Tyche but not a male.

Here is the Valerian I version:
http://www.acsearch.info/search.htm...ndria&view_mode=1&cac=1&cng=1&fac=1&page=2#10

the Valerian II coin from the year before:
http://www.acsearch.info/search.html?search=gallienus+alexandria&view_mode=1&cac=1&cng=1&fac=1#16

 

Ah! You're right! I wasn't interpreting those things as turrets at first, I thought it was just a poorly done Serapis headdress.

 

Ok, Digging through the box of stuff today I came across this guy. It intrigued me. I have some question about it's authenticity. The designs look like things I am running across. I see some letters on the obverse outside of the stamping that I question. It looks like an "LB" or something and a B. I have read that some old time collectors would stamp their own things on coins to identify their collections as theirs... could it be this?

Thoughts?

 

Cnidos, 6th-5th century BC drachm. I am not skilled enough to say it is a fake or not but it would fool me from what shows on the photo. The stamp is modern and could be a collector/museum mark as well as initials of a copyist. This should go to Sear.

This is a bad fake one:
http://www.forumancientcoins.com/fakes/displayimage.php?album=10&pos=485
Yours is better (or genuine?).

 

If this is an electrotype and the MB reading (British Museum) makes that obvious, there should be a distinct seam around the edge where the two halves were joined. Electrotypes are perfect copies but the halves are very hard to join without it showing. Often no attempt is made to hide the seam since the item was made to be a study object not a fake to fool the likes of me not smart enough to ask for a photo of the edge.

This, of course, throws doubt on every other coin in the group. If they all have edge joins the value of the hoard just took a major tumble. When first posted, the lot seemed believable with top coins in the $100-200 range. With the addition of this $2000+ item we have to be suspicious of all.

This page shows a nice edge photo.
http://www.calgarycoin.com/reference/fakes/electro.htm