Valentinian III - Half Siliqua from Ravenna? Help Please.

The problem here is that I have never seen in person, or handled, a late Roman silver coin. So I really have no idea what I am dealing with here.

From what I can tell, based on legends and design, this is Valentinian III half siliqua from the Ravenna (possibly Rome?) Mint, RIC 2085 (pearl-diademed bust), Victory reverse.

I looked at a lot of these online. The thing that worries me most about this one is the weight - it is rather heavy: 1.72 grams. 14 mm diameter. Most of these are around 1 gram, with the heaviest examples I found around 1.30 grams.

Style for this issue is all over the place, based on the examples I found online. So I don't really have much of a "feel" for appearances.

Forgery Network didn't seem to have any of this type in their database. I cruised the Bulgarian fake-makers on eBay and didn't find any (lately they seem to like doing an abundance of small, late silvers from the Migration Period, but they haven't bothered with this particular one so far as I could find).



Is this genuine? Or a c. 2019 Bulgarian fake? I understand making such a call from a photo is not a sure-fire method, but a lot of folks on Coin Talk have handled this sort of material and I welcome the news, good, bad or baffled.

Many thanks in advance!

 

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here's a freshly minted fake from Yugoslavia

 

Not a die match, but there is a definite, unfortunate, family resemblance.

Thanks for sharing this, Victor. Though it is not good news!

 

That is quite a bad fake, but I realize that it's difficult when you haven't seen other examples before....I suggest going through wildwinds or coinarchives.

Here's what its supposed to look like....
my half siliqua of Valentinian III

Ex: Heritage Auctions, CNG

 

Thanks for sharing your example, Romancollector. Yours is much nicer than a lot of them I saw online.

The Bulgarian "pressed" look worried me, but again, having never seen one in person confused me some (and LRB's tend to look a bit flat and "pressed" as well). Oh well. Another specimen for my black box!

Part of my problem with determining fake/not fake was the style is all over the place on these. I used acsearch to pull up a lot of examples and some are pretty bad. Here is a Savoca auction example (at 1.32 grams it was about the heaviest I found too):



https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=4018089