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Help Identify Mystery Coin (smaller pictures now)

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  • lordmarcovanlordmarcovan Posts: 43,194 ✭✭✭✭✭
    I've never thought I'd say this, but your pix are actually almost too BIG to ID it- I had to post 'em into my photo software so I could zoom out. On my screen, I could only see one corner of the picture at a time! image

    What you have there is a Fourth century Roman bronze, with what is called a "campgate" reverse. Probably Constantine the Great (circa 306-337 AD). Or one of his dynasty, certainly. But I think it's Constantine himself.

    Generally speaking, Constantinian bronzes are common and very modestly priced (say $5-10 or so), and while yours is probably not going to be a super valuable coin, the Campgates are popular with collectors and this piece might bring more (up into the $20-ish range, I'd guess).

    I will of course defer to the more experienced members to correct me if and where I am mistaken.

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  • lordmarcovanlordmarcovan Posts: 43,194 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Here- this may help. You can hit Ctrl.+F on that page and type in "campgate" to hop to all the campgates on the page, for comparison.

    And, for the sake of other comparison, here is the Constantine the Great (Constantine I) type coin from my old emperor set. Note that it was a campgate, too. It was neither a high-grade nor high-dollar coin, but I liked it for its sandy "desert" patina.

    image

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  • Your mystery coin is what is known as a "big old huge blob that obliterates the whole monitor viewable area". It is similar and related to the "big old huge blob, and then some".

    Glad I could be of help.
  • MsMorrisineMsMorrisine Posts: 32,136 ✭✭✭✭✭
    OK.

    My monitor is set up a lot wider than most other people's


    I'll resize them.

    Current maintainer of Stone's Master List of Favorite Websites // My BST transactions
  • SapyxSapyx Posts: 1,977 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Yep, it's a Constantine the Great "campgate" follis, much the same as the one LordM posted except the mintmark on yours is SMTS - Thessalonica mint, I believe.
    Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.
    Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations"

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  • lordmarcovanlordmarcovan Posts: 43,194 ✭✭✭✭✭
    FWIW, I paid probably $12-15 for mine.

    The reduced-size pix are much easier to see. Thanks.

    Your piece looks to have much sharper detail than my old one. It doesn't have the cool desert patina mine had, but it does have pretty decent patina, since it obviously was never completely cleaned. It's fairly obvious that it remains "as dug", and I would leave it that way. Looks OK. (It looked a lot more porous and corroded in the huge pictures, because we were getting a microscopic view of the surface!)

    For a fairly inexpensive coin, it's pretty neat, and packs a good bit of history. image

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  • MsMorrisineMsMorrisine Posts: 32,136 ✭✭✭✭✭
    thanks to both of you.

    It is quite corroded

    I found it on the floor of a bank next to their change counting machine.


    This will probably stand as my oldest change machine find for a long, long time.
    Current maintainer of Stone's Master List of Favorite Websites // My BST transactions
  • lordmarcovanlordmarcovan Posts: 43,194 ✭✭✭✭✭


    << <i>I found it on the floor of a bank next to their change counting machine. >>



    Whoa, Nellie! That's bloody amazing! image

    It seems to be the season for bizarre Roman coin finds.

    I found one of my own this spring, on the ground...in GEORGIA.

    Didn't even have my metal detector with me. Go figure, huh.



    << <i>It is quite corroded >>

    That's par for the course, considering it spent a few centuries or millennia buried in the ground before somebody found it and it ended up in somebody else's collection (and then, strangely, on the floor of the bank). It is actually not too bad an example for the period, considering what it is. Not bad at all, really. Some of what would be called "corrosion" on more modern coins becomes patina on ancients, and patina is usually considered a good thing. (It's kind of a fine line, there.) One can't judge an ancient coin by the same standards as a modern one. (And by "modern" I mean pretty much anything made in the last 300 years or so.)

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  • just as an fyi...

    you can reduce the font or zoom out in a browser by Ctrl - or zoom in by Ctrl +





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  • lordmarcovanlordmarcovan Posts: 43,194 ✭✭✭✭✭
    FFOD- good tip! Thanks. I didn't know about that one. It works!

    I know some of the basic hot key commands, like the ever-useful Ctrl+Z, but that one I've never done before... until now.

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