OK, very new to ancients and my hat is off to you guys! I picked up a Denarius and figured I could sort some of it out myself. The obverse legends read IMP M AUREL ANTONINUS AUG, I can't believe how many of these guys have Antoninus in their name! No way to post pics yet, maybe I can get my son to help me out with that.
In this case, it should be Marcus Aurelius. With some searching, you should be able to find your coin in OCRE.
When dealing with the Antoninus group, you will benefit from learning a few tricks. This takes time and practice. The only thing to do is 'experience' as many coins as you can either in person (coin shows) or in photos online. After a while the faces will start to be familiar and might suggest a place to start looking. Another trick is to check lists or search for the reverse of the coin and see who used that one. As long as the people on this list get the idea that you are genuinely interested in learning to do this work yourself, I suspect you will find all the help you need. I really do suggest you post photos of the coins and tell what you have already done to ID it on your own. What legends can you read? What do you think it might be (what choices strike you as possible)? Your coin is a bit unusual in that it includes AVREL which even most coins of Aurelius do but rather suggests that this is a coin of his. He only used that legend for a short period and most of his coins do not have any part of Aurelius in the legend. Is yours a Concord or Providentia reverse by chance? When you ask a question and include info on both sides and the best image you can make, we will have an easier time helping. By 'helping' I mean helping you find the answer rather than just doing the ID for you. The fact that you have a full reading on the legend is a good sign. I suggest starting with coins you can read and leaving the hard to ID ones that retain only a few letters for later. Welcome.
Thanks to you both. I do enjoy the research and ID'ing of coins. I have mostly collected US colonials for many years so ancients are kind of different to me. Can't honestly be sure how deep I'll go with ancients but am looking at books to buy. I tend to spend more on books than coins. I just saw an offering on ebay for a random Denarius and couldn't resist. Oh, this piece has a Concord reverse. CONCORD AUC [or possibly G] TPPXVI COSIII
Books are great but I suggest augmenting them with looking at the thousands and thousands of online images, too. IDing coins is important to many people but understanding them is important on a higher level. Searching with a few modifications: CONCORD AVG TRP XVI COS III produces https://www.acsearch.info/search.ht...s=1&thesaurus=1&order=0¤cy=usd&company= Examine these images and see how the coins are like and different from yours. For example, does yours have a laurel wreath or bare head portrait? I have rather few coins of Aurelius and no exact match. See how mine is different and the same and research what the differences mean.
Welcome to the ancient side of things! I found a Marcus Aurelius denarius with Concordia on the reverse and TRP XVI - maybe the same? Doug's looks to be XVII...so yes, the varieties can be rather extensive, and hard to spot at first. There are other differences too, but I'll let you mull them over - that's what makes it fun Sorry for the lousy pics - seller's photos from an old eBay auction: Marcus Aurelius Denarius (161-162 A.D.) Rome Mint IMP M AVREL ANTONINVS AVG, bare head right / CONCORD AVG TR P XVI, COS III in ex, Concordia seated left, holding patera and resting elbow on small statue of Spes, cornucopiae below seat. RIC 35. (2.82 grams / 17 mm)
That appears to be it Mike, thanks. Thanks to everyone for the information, I am looking forward to the new challenge! I already had a few Denarii of the Flavians that I got years ago, so I think I'll be studying these for a while.
Welcome aboard. I just want to add that the reason a coin of Marcus Aurelius has ANTONINVS in the legend is because he was adopted by Antoninus Pius as his heir. A good ancient coin book to start with is the Handbook of Ancient Roman Coins by David Van Meter. It provides a good discussion of coin denominations and reverse types: https://www.amazon.com//gp/offer-li...id=/?condition=used&tag=bookfinder-test-a2-20
20 years ago, I bought some 4th century LRBs and was able to get a copy of RIC VIII really cheap. I was pretty good at IDing worn early US copper by Sheldon and Cohen numbers, so I figured it would be easy. Boy was I mistaken. It took a while just trying to figure out how to navigate RIC yet alone ID anything. Thank goodness that was the time when the chat groups were starting and I learned a lot from them and eventually figured it out. (I even recognize some names on the CT ancient forum that used to frequent Moneta_L and some of the other groups)
bare head right - It is hard to tell from the photo. That is why I suggest we all try to learn minimal photo skills. Does this one have a bare head or are there laurel wreath ties hanging behind the neck? The coin comes both ways and the wreath part on the head itself wears away before the rest of the detail. Yes, my coin is a year later TRP XVII.
Ancients require a lot of patience and sometimes trial-and-error attribution, but we are happy to help! The #1 piece of advice I can give when working with Imperial coins is to learn what each emperor looked like. Augustus, Tiberius, and Caligula all used Idealist portraits that can be hard to tell apart, and this precedent was reintroduced under Diocletian. But all emperors between Claudius and Carinus used photorealistic busts - 95% of the time you don't even need a legend to identify the emperor. Reverses are a bit more difficult, but again there are clear patterns and the figure can usually be identified with some practice. Most important features to look for are cornucopia, patera, branch, baton/scepter, globe, and of course weapons like a bow or spear. You can figure out the attribution as long as you can identify the emperor and what one or two things the reverse deity is holding.
We might quibble on the exact number but I see 95% as about right as long as we allow for the differences made by various branch mint coins during reigns where there were multiple cities striking Imperial coins. If you learn those differences, even the rulers outside the stated span can be IDed in many cases. I have more 'friends' whose faces I recognize from the distant past than I do of people living today. Some of them are more consistent than others due to their changing as they aged. Some have a few stranger portraits from their first years when the diecutters merged the appearances of the new and old emperors. Diocletian did introduce a more formal and less than photographic realism but many coins of that period are more distinct from the other rulers than they are realistic. Specialists who look at many thousands of coins see things that the rest of us may not see. Somewhere in the past of Coin Talk is a thread where we posted portraits and asked for guesses as to who it was. Some were easier than others.
Thanks Doug. I oopsed that one - those are indeed laurel ties. You can even see a leaf. This was one of my "year or two ago" attributions, and I am finding I made a lot of mistakes. Still do, but I hope not as many. To tie into the "educational" aspects of the OP: in order to make the correction, I went to OCRE. I searched "Marcus Aurelius" "denarius" and "Concordia" - and got 27 hits. http://numismatics.org/ocre/results...enarius"+AND+portrait_facet:"Marcus+Aurelius" I then narrowed it down with "seated" which only took it down to 23. Concordia was a popular gal with the Philosopher-Emperor, so it would seem. Since mine has AVREL as part of the inscription, I narrowed it down that way to 10 http://numismatics.org/ocre/results...elius"+AND+fulltext:seated+AND+fulltext:AVREL "XVI" brought it down to four. Three of them are bare-headed. The only laureate one is RIC 37. http://numismatics.org/ocre/results...xt:seated+AND+fulltext:AVREL+AND+fulltext:XVI Thanks again Doug.
This is also often my search process on OCRE as well as more often than not on ACSearch. Thanks Mike for documenting this, as for a beginner this type of breakdown is very useful.
I often use http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/ric/i.html as a quick way of identifying coins of particular emperors (if you have some idea who it might be), because you can see a page for each emperor (or empress) with a detailed description, the text of the inscriptions, and thumbnail image for each coin of that ruler, along with the catalog number(s) for each coin. So you can use Crtl-F to do a search for all the coins with a particular word or sequence of words in the inscription, or a particular image on the reverse.
We still have to be careful to avoid errors caused by Wildwinds or acsearch copying sales listings without verification. OCRE is safer but we really should be on the watch wherever we seek information. Everyone makes some mistakes but the worst mistake is believing that we don't.
