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More ancient ID'ing

I'm stuck
I can find stuff similar to each side, but nothing with each side coupled like this. It looks like it's two reverses, with two mintmarks. I don't get it, and I can't find it.

This one is thin. No clue what to make of it other than the wheel.

Comments

  • harashaharasha Posts: 3,079 ✭✭✭✭✭

    That presumably Byzantine piece most certainly is odd. Not only different mint marks, but different denominations. Leads me to wonder if it is some idle workpiece from a subsequent era.

    Honors flysis Income beezis Onches nobis Inob keesis

    DPOTD
  • SapyxSapyx Posts: 1,976 ✭✭✭✭✭

    The reason the Byzantine piece is so messed up, and why you're not finding a match in the catalogues, is that it's overstruck, with the reverses of both overstrike and undertype being the most prominent features.

    On the "M" side, you can see remnants of the undertype design (which would have been an imperial portrait): a small cross at 12 o'clock, another cross at 3 o'clock, and the striped pattern beneath the "M" being the remannt of the imperial robes from the portrait. The "M" design is therefore the overstrike, making the "XXXX" side therefore the undertype, or older side.

    Guessing that the "XXXX" design is Phocas, while the overstruck "M" design must be an emperor after Phocas - probably Heraclius.

    Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.
    Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations"

    Apparently I have been awarded one DPOTD. B)
  • CoinCoinsCoinCoins Posts: 698 ✭✭✭
    edited March 7, 2023 1:07PM

    i like it.

    who's head is this?

  • CoinCoinsCoinCoins Posts: 698 ✭✭✭

    are there any price guides for ancients? websites or books?

    i think those big 'world coins' books only go back to the 1600's

  • harashaharasha Posts: 3,079 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited March 7, 2023 3:27PM

    The profile on the bronze appears to be the emperor Hadrian.
    As for websites, many people may recommend:

    https://wildwinds.com/coins/

    Honors flysis Income beezis Onches nobis Inob keesis

    DPOTD
  • SapyxSapyx Posts: 1,976 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @CoinCoins said:
    who's head is this?

    That would indeed be emperor Hadrian. For emperors from Augustus right through to Valerian, the portraits are distinctive enough that you can usually identify even a worn or corroded example. The uniformity of design most emperors are treated with is a clear indicator that there must have been some kind of "standard imperial portrait" supplied to the mints that they were expected to copy from.

    @CoinCoins said:
    are there any price guides for ancients? websites or books?

    i think those big 'world coins' books only go back to the 1600's

    The standard "price guides" for ancient coins are the books authored by David R. Sear and published by Spink. However, they aren't updated very frequently. The most recent version of the Roman catalogue is the Millennium edition, printed in five volumes from 2000 to 2014. It's best to use them as a kind of gauge of relative value, rather than an absolute price list - especially since prices for ancients have gone completely nuts since COVID.

    Sear's Roman books are reasonably complete and comprehensive. His Greek books (two volumes) are less so, but usually include most of the coin types you're likely to encounter on the market. The Greek Imperial (Roman Provincial) book is seriously incomplete; Roman Provincial coinage would need a Britannica-sized compilation for thorough coverage.

    A better "price guide", or at least one that you can use to calibrate the Sear prices, are the auction result compilation websites. CoinArchives used to be awesome, but a few years ago they switched to a subscription model, and few people apart from dealers can afford to pay the $600 per year subscription to access their database. The free version of CoinArchives can only see the last few months worth of auction results, which is mostly useless unless you're looking at a very common coin type.

    Wildwinds does have some prices, but those prices are almost as out-of-date as Sear, tended to rely on eBay results a little too strongly, and generally isn't updated.

    ACsearch.info is another good auction-result-crawling site, not as complete as CoinArchives used to be but better than nothing.

    Finally, there's Numista. It's a wiki-style database, and mainly world coins focussed, so the result are very hit-and-miss.

    Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.
    Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations"

    Apparently I have been awarded one DPOTD. B)
  • CoinCoinsCoinCoins Posts: 698 ✭✭✭

    @Sapyx said:

    For emperors from Augustus right through to Valerian, the portraits are distinctive enough that you can usually identify even a worn or corroded example.

    B) I'm learning

    @CoinCoins said:
    are there any price guides for ancients? websites or books?

    i think those big 'world coins' books only go back to the 1600's

    The standard "price guides" for ancient coins are the books authored by David R. Sear and published by Spink.

    "Roman Coins And Their Values" expensive set of books but I want it

  • CoinCoinsCoinCoins Posts: 698 ✭✭✭

    Just got this in the mail. Cato the Younger 47-46 BC. Wondering if it's legit I guess. It's 13mm. I think it's this - https://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1383.html#porcia11 I don't see any with this color


    Porcia 11, Obv: Cato wreathed head of Liber right, Rev: Victory seated right. Cr462/2, Syd 1054

  • SapyxSapyx Posts: 1,976 ✭✭✭✭✭

    That's supposed to be a silver denarius? I don't think so. Way too yellow. Plus, some other concerning features: the general fuzziness, the file marks across the face, and the "tooling" of the wreaths on obverse and reverse. I'd assume fake.

    Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.
    Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations"

    Apparently I have been awarded one DPOTD. B)
  • lordmarcovanlordmarcovan Posts: 43,194 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited March 12, 2023 8:18AM

    @CoinCoins said:
    Just got this in the mail. Cato the Younger 47-46 BC. Wondering if it's legit I guess.

    Nope. Has all the appearance of a brass tourist fake. Sorry.


    Explore collections of lordmarcovan on CollecOnline, management, safe-keeping, sharing and valuation solution for art piece and collectibles.
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