Some time ago, I bought an auction lot with 6 contemporary imitations of 4th century Roman coins. Here are the two nicest ones on the kitchen table - they are better in hand. One is a cententionalis imitating Constantius Gallus (with his pointy nose), reverse Concordia militum, the emperor between two christogram standards. This is the example, my coin's measures are almost the same: 21.5 mm diameter, 4.84 gr. Not in Bastien. To the right you see the Constantine I type with helmet, reverse Victoriae laetae, common enough (Bastien pl. 41 nr. 1). but not with the head to the left, like mine. 16.5 cm, 2.46 gr. See P. Bastien, Imitations of Roman bronze coins 318-363, p. 143-177 in Museum Notes 30, ANS 1985.
I would say that the head to left types (H11 and H12 RIC busts) are actually fairly common. I have a page on these with 70 examples and 30 of them are left facing. http://www.constantinethegreatcoins.com/barb2/
Nice coins. I enjoy looking at what details the contemporary imitators kept and what they missed, or left out. I think some of the celetors who copied RR denarii copied worn coins that were missing details like the horses on my C.TAL. LRB are not my collecting, but I enjoy seeing and at times buying coins with a Christogram, consisting of the Greek letters chi (Χ) and rho (Ρ). It looks like your coin has the X but not the P. @Victor_Clark do the standards come in both X & chi-rho?
for Constantine I, you can find both types from the Arles mint, but the examples with X on the standard are much harder to find compared to Chi-Rho on standard.
Very nice! But how about Constantius Gallus? I think this barbarian has made an excellent copy, with the little circles in the standards.
Chi-Rhos are not hard to find on official Gallus coins but I do not recall seeing one on a barbarous copy.
Here an original and a barbarous imitation of the OP type, but for Constantius II: AE21 (4 mm smaller than the large AE2 original above) 12:00. 3.30 grams. Obverse letters suggest most of the original legend, including CONST ...PF AVG No A behind head. /CON [reversed]COR....MILITVM somewhat blundered, A in field left, B in field right. Mintmark a garbled "TS[reversed]H" which is an attempt at "TSA" for Thessalonica. Prototype: RIC VIII page 414, Thessalonica 130, which does has the same field marks on the reverse. Prototype dated 1 March - 25 December 350. For more imitations, see: http://esty.ancients.info/imit/
Well, not only the nose points into the direction of Gallus, but also the unbroken text, the sign of the caesar. As for the mint name, it's not so clear on my kitchen table photo, but this part of the seller's picture shows it a little bit better, you can read 'SMXL' or something like it.
