Geta Denarius

great coins all around....i like the last one, nice to see the horseman spearing the infantry for once instead of the other way around.

Geta coins are not scarce. The edict was not enforced terribly well. There are, however, some very nice provincials from which Geta's portrait has been removed leaving Caracalla facing an empty space where Geta used to be. I don't have one to show but this link gives the idea:
http://www.acsearch.info/record.html?id=210292

The same city had coins with Septimius and Julia and a boy portrait countermark which is usually identified as Caracalla but bears no name. My example is unusual in that the countermark was removed. What it was is anyone's guess.



I have never seen a Geta coin with only the legend defaced. Most of his Roman coins were silver so hiding or melting them would have been easier.

On a more serious note, nice coin dougsmit. That is an interesting piece of history.

Doug,
I did not mean to imply that coins of Geta are scarce. In general they are very common and quite cheap. The coins of Geta as Augustus are in general scarcer and carry a premium.
Regards,
Martin

The coin arrived and on closer inspection, most of the surface of the coin is covered in crystallized silver which although not terribly distracting is something I tend to select against. On the reverse near "cossII" the crystallization is absent and has a mirror surface. The crystallization looks pretty neat under the scope at 200x. Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't light crystallization of silver one of the hardest things for forgers to replicate?