Nero?

RIC or SEAR # Available?

Hi there, Caesar77. This long list of coins you've posted today... are you just double-checking the ebay seller's attribution before purchasing, trying to see if they are legitimate, or what?

Are you a collector? What are your goals? Have you purchased any coins yet?

Welcome :D

This coin is from Frascatius isn't it? It looks like one of his pictures. He is a well trusted seller and has been selling and collecting for many years. 4 or 5 of my coins come from him.

Glad to have you here :)

If you haven't browsed there already, VCoins is a reputable conglomeration of coin sellers. The possibility of modern fakes is anywhere-- as evidenced by FURIVS RVFVS's recent Nero thread-- but the risk is much lower from stores on that site.

Also, in case you aren't already aware, there are a couple of very good sites for seeing and tracking upcoming auctions and coins. These auction aggregator sites are http://www.numisbids.com and http://www.sixbid.com

There is considerable overlap but a few auction houses are listed on one but not the other. Roma Numismatics, for instance, shows on Sixbids but not Numisbids.

You can set up watch lists and receive automatic notification when a coin you seek appears in an upcoming auction. CNG (www.cng.com) also has a similar function.

CNG's archives are extensive. It's the first place I look when searching for comparisons and price information. http://cngcoins.com/Coins_sold.aspx

www.acsearch.info is my other main source for comps.

Good luck in you quests. It will be fun watching your collection grow and I look forward to any historical tidbits you may choose to post along with your new purchases.

Edited for clarification: the auction aggregator sites do not include ebay; they list major ancient coin auction houses such as CNG, Roma, Stack's Bowers, Goldberg, Nomos, NAC, etc.

Sorry almost forgot to say to the community. As I said in another thread we are happy to help. I understand that you had a problem on another forum, but please refrain from talking about it here. You are welcome here.

There is a Dionysos on Vcoins, http://www.vcoins.com/en/stores/dio...type=ancient but I don't know if it is the same seller. You'll probably be able to tell when you look at the Vcoins site.

Here is the listing of all of the Vcoins sellers. Some of them do also sell on ebay. http://www.vcoins.com/en/stores/anc...Default.aspx

As for the coin in this thread, I was about to reply with more attribution information but ran into an interesting problem which I'm researching for you right now. I hope to post more about this tonight.

As for the coin you posted in this thread, as others mentioned RIC lists Roman Imperial Coinage and this is a provincial issue.

I collect a wide swathe of ancient coins but have taken a special interest in Roman Egyptian coinage. I have Emmett's reference book and it is arguably the most broad (and most recent) reference book.

For most Roman Egyptian coins, the seller will list the Emmett number or Milne number although there are several other reference books which may be cited.

The coin you posted puzzled me for a bit because of the reverse legend but it's fine-- I had just forgotten something.

The date is a bit off the flan but this particular reverse was issued in year 11 and year 12 of Nero's reign. On this particular reverse type, the date is in the lower left field and is a bit off the flan on your coin. However, what can be seen is clearly not a B so that makes it year 11 and the date, if on flan would appear as a somewhat crowded together "LIA", with the I nestled above the lower part of the L. The reverse legend would read A Y T O K P A

Your coin is an Emmett 118. The full way to write it for your coin is this:

Emmett 118(11)

118 is the type (Nero, with eagle standing left on thunderbolt etc); the regnal year is in parenthesis. Emmett also provides rarity ratings and this is "R1" or common. However, rarity ratings should be taken with a grain of salt. Emmett's are derived from a vast survey of museums and auctions but this does not take into account coins which have been sold privately over the years. Plus, Roman Egyptian tetradrachms have historically not been big dollar coins and are often sold in group lots at auction, so cataloging the types sold in such a manner is not possible.

In Milne's classification/catalog, your coin is 228 (Milne 228 or M 228)

The obverse legend on your coin, if fully on flan, would read as this:

N E P (Omega) K (Lambda) A V K A I (Sigma) (Sigma) E B (Gamma) E P

I had to spell out certain characters because this forum's software doesn't play well with Greek letters. Note that Vs and Ys are sometimes used interchangeably and in some references you'll see what looks like a Y on your coin noted as a V and vice versa.

In case you're interested, below is a translation of your coin's legend abbreviations. I apologize for the cumbersome display but the limitation of displaying certain Greek characters makes it difficult. For the letters appearing on your coin which have to be spelled out, I've put them in parentheses. The letters in brackets are the letters which complete the word if it were to be spelled out. Hope that makes sense :)

N E P (Omega) [N] = Nero

K (Lambda) A Y [(Delta) I O (Sigma)] = Claudius

K A I (Sigma) [A P] = Caesar

(Sigma) E B [A (Sigma) T O (Sigma)] = Augustus

(Gamma) E P [M A N I K O (Sigma)] = Germanicus

The reverse legend translates to Imperator:

A V T O K P A [T (Omega) P]

It is entirely possible that I've made some typos in all of this :D


Edited to add: Regnal year 11 for Nero was 64-65 AD.