Top 15 Roman Provincials for 2021

Wonderful coins @DonnaML.......Nice-Nice...I'm sorry I can't pick only 3!...You know I love that #3 D+D, the big Dracm's of Trajan, A.P and Hadrian each have their own special distinctions, all worthy top 10's...Sweet Hadrian/Pharaoh Obol....That amazing reverse on the Hadrian Mummiform....I could go on but I think you get the gist.....'ALL' are great coins!....Congrats on an interesting 2021 collecting year...Paul

 

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It took me a while, as a beginner, to learn hwo to truly appreciate the provincial coins. Their mail disadvantage, as you mentioned, is the condition standard. Plus most of provincial coins (not your case) have "standard" reverses and after your collection grows adding standard reverses gets less interesting, unless you specialize on a certain area.

But your selection is interesting and I read the topic with great interest.
Very hard to choose some favorites.
I have voted
# 1. Roman Egypt, Claudius/Antonia - love the portraits, especially Antonia's - and not a portrait you see to often on coins
#3. Cilicia, Anazarbus (Domitian/Domitia) - attractive toning, good condition and another portrait you don't see every day
#6. Roman Egypt, Hadrian/Pharaoh (Amenemhat III) - for me, an extraordinary coin, seeing the image of a Pharaoh exactly like we imagine a Pharaoh.

But it was very hard to choose a favorite, as Trajan with elephands quadriga and Hadrian with Mummiform Ptah-Sokar-Osiris are also interesting.
From 11-15 I particularily enjoyed Philip II's AE Tetrassarion and the Zodiac series coin.
A very good selection in my opinion.

 

I'll have 7, 9 and 14 please

 

Kudos ! I wish if I were a coin sucker. I voted 6, 8and 9. I also enjoyed the attractive condition of Trajan Decius Billon's Tet. Keep walking together.

 

Difficult to chose three coins , the winner for me is #9(the Sphinx) followed by #4 and #5. Congratulations !

 

Thanks so much for all the enthusiastic responses! I was a bit concerned last night that nobody would feel that way -- that they wouldn't "get it" about Provincials -- and that I shouldn't have even posted these.

I'm glad so many like the Trajan elephants and the Hadrian Sphinx and Pharaoh and mummiform Ptah-Sokar-Osiris reverses, plus the Philip II Griffin. I'm very fond of them myself! As I am of all of them. The special thing about the Nomes Obol to me is that to the best of my knowledge it's the only ancient coin portraying an Egyptian Pharaoh, looking exactly as we expect one to look, as @ambr0zie points out. It's fascinating to me to realize that Amenemhat III was as ancient in Hadrian's time as Hadrian's time is to us. And yet he was still being worshipped in the Arsinoite Nome. (See the link I posted to the remainder of the footnote for that coin.)

I'm sure I'm not the only person who's noticed that Hadrians are by far the most common Roman Egyptian coins on the market, even though I believe that Antoninus Pius issued just as many. By contrast, I rarely see Trajans, and almost never a Marcus Aurelius. So it shouldn't be a surprise that I posted so many in this thread.

So far, I've posted 1 Greek coin, 19 Imperials, and 15 Provincials on my "top 10" lists. That's out of 73 ancient coins purchased in 2021 (with the possibility of one or two more) -- a lot, but half as many as last year, when I was still engaged a bit in my initial "one coin per emperor" quest. So I've already listed as favorites almost half of the coins I've bought this year, before even posting my favorite Roman Republicans. But if one chooses carefully, is it so surprising that half one's purchases end up as "favorites"?

As for my favorite Roman Republicans, as I explained before, I'm waiting to make my decisions until I see if I succeed in one more bid at an auction taking place in a few days. I'm not optimistic, but who knows? As of now, I've bought 23 Roman Republican coins this year out of the total of 65 I own, and out of my 73 coin purchases in 2021. So I doubt that I'll be posting 20 of them as favorites, as @El Cazador was hoping! 15, perhaps. Which would make an even 50 favorite coins this year. I think I posted 40 last year!

 

I haven't seen one like that before either, which is the main reason it appealed to me. I have no idea if it has a special meaning, though. I does remind me a bit of St. George slaying the dragon!

 

Whaaaat? Who are these crazy people who wouldn't "get it" about Provincials? That's okay though... less competition for the rest of us.

Many terrific coins on this list. My three favorites are the Arsinoite nome obol, the mummiform Osiris tetradrachm, and that very nice Baris bronze. The first two are types that have been long on my want list. Those are great examples you managed to snag. Congrats!

 

I'm pretty sure quite a bunch of CTers wouldn't pinch their nose at provincials. I couldn't decide for which three to vote, as I would gladly adopt ten of them in my trays : Antonia, Domitia, elephants, Pharao, Osiris, Isis, Sphynx, Leo, Gryphin...and TD tet

Yes, we have to forget our usual collecting standards, but the variety is so wide, and the types so interesting

Q

 

Well, so much for my waiting to bid for one more Roman Republican coin in an upcoming auction before starting to put together my list of top RR coins for the year. Once again, it's an M. Volteius snake biga denarius, and once again, I'm defeated -- this time before the auction actually begins. The live auction phase doesn't start for almost two more days, and the pre-bidding is already up to 1,865 €. (See https://www.cgbfr.com/volteia-denier-spl,brm_697392,a.html.) Which is almost twice as much as the absolute maximum I planned to bid or realistically could afford to bid. In the end, the price may well equal or exceed the 2,550 € that a similar (and probably slightly better) example sold for in a Soler y Llach auction in late October. What is it about this coin that makes decent examples so incredibly expensive lately? The prices weren't nearly this high even a year or two ago. I guess everyone wants one as much as I do, and a lot of them have much deeper pockets!

So now I don't have to wait to begin my RR list. I'm pretty sure of seven or eight already, and have about 10 candidates for the final two or three. So I'll probably do exactly what I did last year: have a poll with those 10 coins to help me pick the last two or three spots for my list.

 

I am glad you decided to go with your top 15/ instead of the usual ten. It would have been hard for anyone to narrow them down to 10. I find the Provincials are a really nice group to collect They usually include the Bosphoran coinage in this group/ which I really love. Again beautifull coins/ write up/ thanks for sharing Donna!
John

 

Thanks again to all of you. This is turning out to be such a landslide for the top 3 (surprisingly, to me!) that I'm getting ready to end the poll early, after only a few days. Not, of course, that the group's three favorites have to be my personal favorites, but I still find the results very interesting.

As of this moment, #1, with 21 votes, is the Trajan drachm with elephant quadriga:




And tied for #2, with 20 votes each, the Hadrian Nomes obol with Pharaoh and the Hadrian drachm with Sphinx:




Way behind at #4, with 11 votes, is the Hadrian tetradrachm with serpent Agathodaemon.

I wish I could have made #'s 11-15 part of the actual poll, but although the Philip II tetrassarion with Griffin and the Trajan Decius Antioch tet got the most "write-in" support, I doubt it would have changed the outcome.

It's a worthy top 3, if I do say so myself! What I found a bit surprising was how popular the Roman Egyptian drachms turned out to be, while none of the tetradrachms made the top 3. (My personal votes were for the elephant quadriga, the Nomes obol, and the mummiform Ptah-Sokar-Osiris, but obviously I'm very fond of all of them!) I guess there's something about those big bronzes that people love, even if they're generally much more worn than the Roman Egyptian tetradrachms.

As for the top Roman Imperial and Ancient Greek poll, which has been up for 10 days now and I don't think is likely to change much either, the top 3 are -- no surprise! --

#1, the runaway winner with 36 votes, the Aspendos stater:

Aspendos video from hjb by DonnaML posted Sep 23, 2021 at 10:22 PM

#2, with 22 votes, the Honorius solidus:



#3, with 20 votes, the Titus denarius with elephant:



(A close #4, with 19 votes, is the Nerva denarius with clasped hands.)

It's a bit ironic, perhaps, that out of the 53 coins I've posted on these lists (including the preliminary RR list), there isn't much question that the #1 coin of all of them is the one and only ancient Greek coin, the Aspendos stater. On the other hand, given how expensive really nice ancient Greek coins tend to be, if I'd bought more of them this year, I couldn't have bought nearly as many Roman coins of all different types. Always a trade-off!

 

That is a really great group you picked up in one year. Along with most people I like the elephant quadriga and the mummiform, and I'm adding a write-in vote for number 12. I really like the zodiac series but have not managed to acquire any of them yet. Great collecting effort and really enjoy reading your threads and seeing your coins and artifacts.

John