Can Someone Walk Me Through This Coin...

What does AVI in the exergue mean. I know the TS represents the mint in Thessalonica.

Very cool...can you actually identify the A and VI..

I have sent the information to Ras regarding the coin not being listed in aorta. You deserve the credit for attributing it (definitely not me). I was along just for the ride!

I have another coin to attribute, but that one will wait until tomorrow.

Thanks again for all your help.

Another invaluable resource is Wildwinds' partial legend search - at least, until you start learning all the types. I had trouble reading the legends at first but you get used to their styles.

I have cleaned up and logged 48 coins and I still have troubles with identification. In fact, I'm quite prone to forgetting the ID - thats why I have logged all my coins in an Excel spreadsheet now and started using 2x2s (I dont much like them for ancients and Id like to hope its a temporary measure until I can get 2x2 plastic wallets for them - I hate not being able to handle them!).

And another note - not all coins can be IDed fully - but merit should still be given for them - my only septimus severus is a beaten up square shaped sestertius with only the bust surviving. On the flip side, nearly blank coins can be fully IDed - this is more of a challenge but I found a lot of rare stuff was missed out because it's too hard to ID such things.

Thought I would do a quick walk-through IDing this coin via Helveticas tables as echizento had mentioned them earlier on in the thread. It could help you in the future.

Don't be disappointed by the AORTA book Hatter, its still a very good resource its just that so many ancient coin types exist its unlikely anyone will ever manage to get all variants into one book (I do believe Raz is looking at an ERIC III book with 500,000 types in it though!).

Quick bit of background:

Helveticas tables are downloadable Excel spreadsheets with many later Roman coins in them allowing quick IDing of the more common coins.

The spreadsheets are based on the info in books called RIC (Roman Imperial Coinage) produced over the last 100 years offering arguably the most complete 'list' of all Roman coins. Most people quote RIC numbers as a way of identifying their coins. RIC can be difficult to read for beginners and comes in 10 Volumes probably setting you back $1000 so not many people have their own copies. Its also badly in need of a re-write to bring it up to date and improve the 'user interface'. This is where AORTA, ERIC I, ERIC II and in the future ERIC III etc succeed, they are much 'nicer' books to use.

Helvetica is the name of the lady (Dane) who manages them - they are a fantastic free resource though I do believe for a small price you can order the spreadsheets from her on her website.

The last thing you need to know is that you will need Microsoft Office and Excel on your PC to use them.

OK - Using them this is how to ID your coin:

Visit the site:

http://www.catbikes.ch/coinstuff/coins-ric.htm

Scrolling down you see titles on the left and pictures of coins on the right, find your coin reverse, or something similar. In this example we need the very last entry at the bottom of the page called 'VOT.. (V, X, XV, XX etc)'.

Clicking 'VOT.. (V, X, XV, XX etc)' will download the spreadsheet to your machine, then you should open it. Then we need to select the correct sheet by looking at your coin and clicking the correct tab at the bottom of the spreadsheet. Your coin is a VOT XX so click the 'VOT XX' sheet.



Make sure your scrolled fully left and fully up so you can see cell A1 in the top left of screen. Not sure how good you are with Excel but we must now use the filters at the top of each column to narrow down the number of coins visible. Easiest place to start on your coin is with the text inside the wreath on the reverse. Yours says VOT / Dot / XXX / Blank.

At the top of the page in column E click the downward arrow next to 'Line 1' and deselect everything but 'VOT' in the options list and click OK.



Do the same for 'Line 2' column F but select 'Dot' only.
Do the same for 'Line 3' column G but select 'XX' only.
Do the same for 'Line 4' column H but select '(blanks)' only.

You will now see the huge list of coins has been reduced to just 27 by filtering out all coins that do not have the same 'in wreath' text as yours.

From this we can then see only coins of Constantine and Licinius remain, the next best thing to filter by is the reverse mintmark (6pm), we can see yours says 'TSAVI', now filter column J, 'Mintmark (in ex.)' accordingly.

Bingo, we are down to just 3 coins!

The only thing left to filter is the 'Other details where known' column, if you look at your coins reverse at 12 o'clock on the wreath is a star, filter accordingly and we are left with just two coins that cant be separated any further using these sheets, under the RIC column these two coins are described as RIC VII Thessalonica 117 and 123.

Not sure how to separate them further, perhaps it could be done with weight, I would need to look at RIC to see if this can be done but not got time right now, maybe someone else can chip in and take it further or maybe do a 'step-by-step' of anther method of IDing such as Wildwinds.

As you get used to IDing these coins you will build up half a dozen methods and resources of IDing which between them can ID all coins but individually they all omit certain variants.

*Edited to add pics of coins to stop paging back and forth*

Go for it, plenty of people here enjoy helping, IDing is for many the most fun part of ancients and those same people were all helped at some point themselves.

Stick with it, its very rewarding when it 'clicks'.

Then you get to help the next batch of newcomers

There are two minor points that make a difference to me but, it seems, to few others here. First is the matter of what you gain out of cataloging coins to a number. RIC is organized in a way that presents coins as they were issued so you can see how and where your coin fits into the big picture of all coins. Derivative lists (online or ERIC) provide you with a number that really means nothing. For the investment, a volume or two of RIC comes with education missing from the competition. Second is the fact that many beginners buy low grade, partial legend coins that can be very difficult to catalog using any of these resources. I was particularly unimpressed with how ERIC II ground to a halt when it is not possible to read a few selected letters of a legend. This is also the case for RIC volumes VI through IX when the missing letters were in the mintmark. All of these books are much easier to use if you first have an understanding of what to expect. This is provided best by works like Warren Esty's RIC IX pages. It could have been approached by ERIC if the various types were presented in a logical order placing all of one type together rather than requiring you to read minor legend details or be prepared to fail. People who write scholarly books for numismatists and people who have collected for decades tend to assume things that may not be obvious to beginners. Beginners need to approach these heavyweight books with the realization that the material may not be presented in a manner they will find immediately clear.

Rather than buying a full set, I suggest beginners buy only a volume or three of RIC and learn how that section works before spending a thousand plus on the set. My Erics are in a box in the attic. I don't use Dane's spreadsheets but agree that they are great buys for the price (free) so might be a good tool for those who are trying to learn to use their RIC volumes. Without a book to provide the information, an RIC number is just a number. Why is it you want that number?

If you do have trouble another route is to open a Google Docs account and use their online spreadsheet program to open the Excel file. I've done this before (when considering a move to a Chromebook) and was not aware of any lost functionality. Just another option if you need it.

The best solution is really to save your own copies of the files (be it in Excel, Google or whatever Apples clone is) then you can colour code the Emperors etc to make them easier to read.