Licinius I Ric VII 15 (?)

The only thing wrong with your attribution is the mintmark is "HTB" not "HTA". It still remains RIC VII 15 with an R1 rarity rating. In fact, wildwinds description says "HTA" but the second image has "HTB": http://wildwinds.com/coins/ric/lici...II_015.4.jpg

I am kinda collecting campgates as a secondary strategy. The reverse on your coin looks in very good condition.

Regards

DV I do remember now that it was you I purchased it from. Looking at your pics you can see the same "blob" of metal in your pic that is discolored in my picture. It just appears to have gotten worse over time since I received the coin from you. It almost looks like it could be picked off with a toothpick or something.

JW the HTB vs. HTA was one of the things that was confusing me the most when it came to attributing this coin. On wildwinds it does show two images for this coin. One with HTA and another with HTB. What mint does HTB refer too?

Also what is the metallic content of this coin?

Thanks to all.

I'm not sure what the crud may be. It could be bronze disease although it doesn't look like it. Keep an eye on it. If it gets larger then it could be BD. There are ways to control BD if that is the case, but I do not think there is an actual cure.

The coin is a very nice Licinus. I think it would look good in any collection so don't get rid of it just because of this small blob.

A mint mark on Roman coins was (in most cases) formed from three or four elements. One of these elements was the Officina identification. Latin letter, a Greek letter or letters or a Roman numeral indicating the officina. Sometimes the officina is omitted and sometimes it precedes the mint name abbreviation. In the case of your coin HT indicates Heraclea while the "A" refers to the workshop.

Although your coin does not have any, many mintmarks also include symbols such as dots, a crescent, or a branch, for example. These symbols probably indicate when the coin was struck and who was responsible for the workshop at that time.

Heraclea was in Thrace explaining the HT. RIC and others that copy them usually list coins with the lowest number workshop and assume you know that the same number applies to all of the shop numbers (up to 15 at one point). The part I find interesting is that the listing sometimes will say HTA even if that particular issue is not known from the A shop but all existing copies are B or some other number. The know shops will be listed but the header information will give the HTA at the top even if no coin listed below it has the A. In some cases all shops struck identical coins so you can get a series in all the shop letters while in other periods shop A struck for one ruler and B for another or used a different type. In the case of your coin there are matching types for shops one through 5 (A-E) but there is a rare variation which adds NN to the end of the reverse legend that only is known from shop B.