I suppose each of the four would be considered the favorite for each viewer and most of the collectors out there would be happy to own any of the four BUT these do a good job illustrating a point I find interesting. I have no idea about the grades assigned to these coins and I have no idea if the reverses might change the 'pecking order' but, IMHO, the best is the last one added because I like the portrait style and it has a clear right legend including DICT compared to its dupe at the left. In most cases, I would have given top rank to the top coin since it is full legend. Am I dreaming or does that top coin show a trace of being overstruck with faint letters at the top left? If so, that one jumps to my #1. Just in case any of you was shopping for my Christmas present , I'll as you not get me the bottom coin which I would expect to be less in both strike and surface. We may see these coins appear in some slab sale soon. It would be interesting to see how they compare to each other in terms of realizations. I will not be bidding on any of them (shocker!). This is a bit beyond that old saying, "If I had some lettuce, I could have a BLT, if I had some bacon." My situation is more basic: I have no bread.
East and West coin are die-identical; would have been a relatively small issue. Beyond my league, though. Frans
Using online resources I've attempted to catalog Julius Caesar/Octavian aurei and have found 32 examples in ACSEARCH and other resources. Of the four pictured below, three of them have records from previous auctions but one of them I've been unable to find: 1 - Last auction record CNG 05-21-2003 hammer price $21,000. 2 - Last auction record CNG 05-18-2016 hammer price $35,000. 3 - Last auction record CNG 01-16-2013 hammer price $27,000. 4 - Unable to find any previous auction records. I also cannot find any previous auction records for jdmKY's example of this aureus. Adding these two aurei to my records turns up 34 examples of this aureus.
Barry, Barry, Barry ... Here you go again causing us members to lavishly smack our lips and lick out chops! All said and done, your post always raises my passion a smidgen or more. Thanks, Fred
#4 has been off the market but is coming up at NAC and is ex. Munzahandlung Basel sale 6, 1936, lot 1521 (and the plate coin of Calico 52b) and jdmKY's is ex. Garrett.
As @AncientJoe has said, mine was ex-Garrett (NFA-Leu, May 17,1984, Lot #679). I bought it from NFA in 1987 for $11,000 + commission. The prior pedigree goes back to about 1915.
I don't think I would mistake a JC Gold aureus: I remember the discussion was that it was minted just before the assassination. Would a denarius go for $4g? (Why is "denarius" coming up as 'misspelled')?
@Michael W. Bradley Nope! It definitely was a denarius that was featured in that episode. In today’s market, $4000 wouldn’t go very far for a decent portrait denarius. There’s simply no such thing as a lifetime portrait aureus of Julius Caesar. As others have already said in this thread, portrait aurei were minted posthumously by Octavian.
Thanks for the additional information. I've added it to my spreadsheet tracking this coin and now have 34 examples of this type.
I had read somewhere that there were 35 recorded specimens; the 34 that I've found myself all have pictures associated with them. It will be difficult to cross-correlate mine with the Babelon list without accompanying pictures, though, so the one (or possibly more) that I'm missing will remain elusive.