Severus Alexander Billon Tetradrachm From Alexandria

I was watching a similar coin on ebay just recently, but decided against buying when the price got too rich for my blood. Tetradrachm of Alexandria have generally very nice coin design and I find them interesting and fascinating. This one of yours has a beautiful portrait, and I am totally envious . I also think these Tetradrachm have significant weight as well. I have a Numerian that is only 19mm but weighs 6.74g. The heft of these coins feels much better in hand then say a like sized Denarius at about 3.5g.

Your have a great coin I think anyone of us would love to see in our own collections.

Regards,

JW

Beautiful coin - thanks for sharing, the reverse is a particularly pleasing design.

Hope that green on his ear isn't anything to worry about!

This is something I've wondered before generally with Roman coins. The Romans were a pretty organised bunch and somehow the 'main' mint (wherever it was situated with regards to where the incumbents power base and seat was) has to communicate to the other mints what bust characteristics were to be used on the new issuers coins.

This would have to be done by transporting something physical from the 'main' mint to all of the outlying ones be it a die, a 'first-off', a proof or something pictorial. If your going to send something why not a bust die, maybe even a die set. We know that a skilled die cutter could produce a single die in as little as a day so it would not be a huge stretch of the imagination to believe initial examples were made centrally then shipped out.

Over time local mints styles would take slightly different paths with new dies giving us the subtle (sometimes not) differences we see on the majority of the coinage as a whole. Perhaps the rarity of the above coin hints to it being made by one of these 'sample' dies and then none, or very few new ones being cut locally to dilute the population and give the overall issue an Alexandria style?

This is one of the situations where Archaeologists would staunchly argue 'no' because of lack of evidence but anyone who has worked in manufacturing or planning, dare I say it anyone with an ounce of common sense would support it as a sensible and efficient solution to the problem of communicating and standardising the new coinage.

I have no idea if this has been investigated in the past, would be very surprised if it hadn't but it seems plausible to me, anyone else?

I agree, its the work of a very talented craftsman, always pleasing to look at.

Having re-read the attribution info I see that this is a year 7 issue so perhaps my above points don't fit fully. But I would add to the above that I think any kind of central standardisation would be an ongoing thing with samples being centrally distributed regularly for new issues or comparison.