Some Auction Wins Today

Excellent coins Bob. I particularly like the Kamnaskires IV. Congrats.

Always a treat to see your Parthians and Elymais coins. Very nicely done! I sometimes wish my interests weren't so diverse so I could pick up nice coins like those Elymais tets!

Quite the wordy Aramaic legend on the last one... any idea what it says?

Ok, I get it "C/M" stands for counter mark - guess I'm still learning. Thanks everyone for being patient.

The dashes on the reverses of Elymaean coins, as seen on a number of emissions of drachms and tets of the Elymais Arsacid Dynasty, constitute one of the big mysteries in Elymaean numismatics.

If interested, the speculations of various scholars regarding the dashes was summarized by Ed Dobbins on pages 44 and 45 of the August 1992 Celator: https://community.vcoins.com/celator-vol-06-no-08/

Thanks, Albert.

Thanks for the comments, Paul. No, the first one isn't a plate coin - it's unpublished. Based on my research it is the fifth to hit the market since 1996. I believe that all share the same obverse die, but I've noted at least two reverse dies among that group.

Regarding your second question, van't Haaff lists three different age types for Kamnaskires IV: young, middle-aged, and old. He actually lists my coin above as the old type, although it seems middle-aged by today's reckoning. Here is my "young" (van't Haaff type 8.1) coin, which I've posted at CCF before. It's one of my favorites in my collection:





Well, my Holy Grail as far as Elymaean coins go is to acquire a coin from the so-called "Early Kamnaskirid Dynasty," meaning a coin of Kamnaskires I Soter, Kamnaskires II Nikephorus, or one the usurpers: Okkonapses, Tigraios, or Dareios. It is extremely unlikely that I will get one of these, though. They are exceedingly rare and very expensive. I have only ever seen two for sale: a curious Kamnaskires II Nikephorus that has been listed at Ma-Shops for some time, and a tragically tooled Kamnaskires I that has been on ebay forever, it seems. The one at Ma-Shops gives me pause since the reverse Greek legend, which should have said "Kamnaskires," seems to have been scratched away completely. This leaves me to wonder if it is a recently-reworked Seleucid issue, which the die engravers of the early period in Elymaean history copied. Other than legends, the reverses of the early Elymaean tets were typologically the same as the Apollo-seated-on-omphalos examples of a number of the Seleucid kings. I don't know if something shady is going on with that coin at Ma-Shops, but it makes me nervous.

Congratulations Bob! Very happy that you got that. was it from VAuctions? I think I saw this one and thought of getting it too . I also won an Arsakes I coin in last CNG auction which had a great provenance (Atrek 1965 Hoard).

Thanks.