Coin Show Report - 20 Ancients From Three Dealers

I'd certainly pay $50 for the Tacitus!

I suspect it was a lot more unless the seller didn't know what he had. Hadn't come across these before but would have noticed it was different had I came across one. Read a few papers online now so have learnt a bit, must say, unless its silvering your coin does look a lot more silver than most XXIs.

I'd always thought the XXI and KA thing was 'disputed', it always seemed to make sense to me and surely these XI and IA coins with their 9% (ish) silver content prove it beyond reasonable doubt?

I was going to post a web picture of an IA coin but I think one of our members may have one, when I searched I landed on one of his web pages and dont want to steal anyones thunder so will wait

I believe the best 'evidence' that XXI refers to the aloy rather than a denomination (20 of these is worth one of those) is that there are some post reform AE1 size folles with the XXI as well and metallurgic tests average around the 4.77% that 20 to one should show. Today we tend to look at mixes as a percentage of the whole rather than the Roman way of add 20 or this to one of that so an XXI coin should be less than 5% since the silver was 1/21 of the whole.

Dealer #2 was one to whom I was returning the Republican denarius I bought last month. I am 90% sure the coin is fake but not absolutely sure of anything beyond I could not sell it to someone and feel right so it is better to return it now since the seller is willing to take it back. The problem is that he did not have that dollar amount in coins I want at prices I'd pay. This dealer is expensive to my tastes on many coins but I'd rather overpay a bit than keep the fake (if it is) and I don't feel right asking for a cash refund when I'm not 100% sure.

The fist half of the needed $100 in trade value was easy. I found a Licinius II that I did not have and that I thought was good looking. I might have balked at paying the cash price but the coin would sell many places for the price and I wanted it.

The second half was more a problem since the dealer keeps his coins in stapled flaps that really make it hard to tell what you are getting. Both of the other coins looked better under the cellophane. I do know that I will be buying very few coin packaged that way in the future. The Licinius looked good out in the air but the Helena and Constantius II surfaces were better hidden under wraps.

I selected the Helena because it is a late Pax Publica type an all of my other coins of hers are the more common Securitas type. It only comes with workshop E and half of that letter is off flan here. It is not much of a coin but it is better than other things he had in the price range and I was unwilling to select something that the packaging prevented exam and that I would have to pay inflated prices for as well.

The last coin was a Constantius II galley type that I could tell had problems but I thought showed some nice detail. Unwrapped, the detail looked better and the surfaces looked worse. This coin has as nice detail on a galley as I could ever want but the mixed black and copper surfaces and the damage to the portrait make it no coin to brag about. This brings up the question of whether you shoul buy a coin like this for the nice boat or hope someday to find one with equal boat and equally perfect surfaces for ten times the price. Unlike most of this dealer's coins, I felt the price was fair so home it came.

I told myself that I was going to buy fewer but nicer coins this time but so far I have only been about half successful. Below are the three coins from Dealer #2. Would you buy one or all? If I had it to do over again, I'd skip this dealer and buy more at dealer #3 coming up later but I really wanted to return that denarius (fake or not).

dougsmit => also, perhaps you could tell us how you get the awesome "black background" to your coins? (thanks, brother)

awesome => thanks Martin (and indirectly Doug) ...

From dealer #3 came 17 coins ranging from Trajan to Arcadius (I did not even look at the Greeks this time because I spent so much on the Romans). I'll try to group them in ways that make a little sense but in no particular order. The first two show two different surface conditions commonly seen on ancients. The Maximianus follis has a glossy dark patina with a bit of a green tone but more dark than colorful. I picked it out for the reverse which is not one of the Genius types so common in this period. The coin is better looking than the photo because I never have good skills with glossy patinas. I should stop buying them but the coins are pretty and I forget that they will be a problem to me later. In comparison see the very matte surfaced Maximinus II with ligher greenish textured surfaces. The photo problem here is more from the weaker relief details possibly explaining why this coin cost 1/3 of the glossy one. I liked it because it has the distinctive Alexandria mint style including liquid pouring out of the patera (dish) on the reverse. Many Genius coins show a dry dish. I'll invite you RIC mavens to decide whether this is RIC 103, 105c or 107c depending on whether the laurel wreath ties are parallel, divergent, rounded or pointed. Methinks the authors of RIC worried too much about such things. You could mention such matters without assigning a number to each bit of minute detail.

Excellent coins.