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Message:: [QUOTE="Terence Cheesman, post: 8123896, member: 86498"]Drachm of Septimius Severus from the mint of Petra. circa 210 AD Obv Head right laureate. Rv. Tyche standing left holding baetyl in right hand and trophy in left. Unpublished 3.11 grms 18 mm Photo by W. Hansen[ATTACH=full]1414596[/ATTACH]I have featured this coin before. Yes it it as far as I know unique and part of a series of drachms known by 29 coins. However the point I would like to make today is that this issue of coinage from the mint of Petra is rather unusual in that not a single specimen has been found in Petra nor its immediate surroundings.   When I started studying this coinage back in 2006 I began to notice a number of things about it. Though the coinage was known in the early part of the twentieth century by 1989 only some seven coins were known of which two were found in archeological context one in Britain the other in Switzerland. Between 1989 to about 2000 another two were found. The vast majority 19 in total were found afterwards and placed in auction between  2002 and 2016. One came on to the market in 2021.   What was interesting about the group brought into the market after 2002 was that when I tried to establish where the coins were found, I could not find a single specimen that came from the Middle East. None of the dealers on line who get their coins from sources in the Middle East ever offered one for sale. However a number of the dealers who got their coins from the Balkans did. I could determine that at least 7 of the 19 coins that entered the market between 2002 to 2016 came from the Balkans. Furthermore the only two that had been found in an archeological context were found outside of the Middle East.  So what does this all mean? I am unsure but it does ask the question "What was the purpose of this coinage?"[/QUOTE]

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