Top Coin Types (Mixed)

This is tough. So many great coins. Here's how I'm feeling at this moment:

1. Darius I Persian siglos
2. Mauryan Empire karshapana
3. Mithradates II Parthian drachm
4. Vima Takto (Soter Megas) Kushan tetradrachm
5. Khusro II Sassanian drachm

Honorable mentions to the spade coin and the Justinian I follis...

Thanks for organizing this, David!

Mithradates II
Persian Siglos
Alchon Hun
Mauryan Karshapana
Widows Mite

For coins recommended as basics for any general ancients collection, understanding the coins submitted to be regarded as exemplars of a whole class of material, I voted:

1. Persian siglos
2. Mithradates II drachm, Parthia
3. AR drachme Boii tribue, 3/2th cent BC
4. widow's mite
5. Roman Provincial



for late antiquity and medieval, I would make a separate category.

Sassanian drachm
Byzantine Aspron Trachy
Anglo-Saxon sceat
a silver denier (e.g. bracteat of Hungary)



Ditto for lands outside the Roman empire

Chinese spade money
Mauryan Empire karshapana
something Hunnite (e.g. Nezak drachm)
Celtic
something Ceylonese (not pictured)

Im sorry I didnt vote:

My 4 favorites:
1. Siglos
2. Mithradates II drachm
3. Ar Drachm (Phillipos imitative)
4. Widows mite

@ lrbguy

here is an enlargement of the mark: (its still unidentified by me..)

I was looking at that too, Bob, and I didn't see anything that matched either. I had hoped that in terms of outline something in the series 78-89 might have had a similar outside shape. But that is stretching it. Here is an example:



Don't be fooled by the color. The item on the left is a siglos, not a daric. The color tone is due to the lights I was using.

The outer shape of his mark is a bag-like curve, which seems to flare out right and left at the top. The central spike is partially off the flan in his example, and the one on the right is incompletely struck. Or so I imagined. But against all that is the interior which has no counterpart in the series or against anything else I have seen.

I can't tell what to make of it, but it is an interesting mark.

This was a lot of fun, David. Thanks. Great coins, all. Congrats to Darius and Mithradates too!

I agree this was quite fun!