Need Help To ID Roman Copper Coins I Found At Relic Site

A Roman coin at a site in Los Angeles? I hope it was private property.

yup, at an old torn down mansion site that was known to house miners/prospector/and nuns early 1900s
:)

To my untrained eye looks like late 300s Honorius copper or VALENTINIEN II (375-392) copper, that is if they made copper coins during this time?


I will post new pics see if I can do better. I cleaned them up a little bit too there was a lot of dirt left on them. Its kind of hard to post larger clearer pics when they require them to only be 100kb? (small)I had to resize them quite a bit, they aren't that clear to begin with and the coins are in really rough shape. I will try and get some better ones next couple days.

I agree with late roman assuming they kept making copper coins like this and siliqua's I'm thinking they might be Honorius copper? that's the best match so far but they aren't exact as the ones I have seen but darned close!

Unfortunately the outside where the lettering would be (giving name) is pretty much gone or barely there on the small one only backside.

thanks for doing best you can with what I gave you guys to work with. I will do my best to get some better shots though this might be as good as it gets for now

A full ID will need better pictures, but I can get pretty close. Both coins have the same reverse type, SPES REIPVBLICAE (Hope for the Empire), which is not a common thing in itself. The one at the top is almost certainly Constantius II whilst the second one is almost certainly Julian II, going by the bust shape. But I must stress that this is conjecture - some surviving legend would be needed to be sure - it looks like the top one has easily enough legend surviving and I'm guessing the bottom one might too, as they differed in their titles.

Heres a page with pictures of the type, the legends you could expect and mints which issued it.

Larger pictures arent necessary, we need clearer. Try taking a picture focusing on the surviving writing.

The writing is the legend I provided - SPES REIPVBLICAE. Yours only have the PVBLICAE bit left. On the other side, with the bust, you'll have the end of the name and some of their titles. There are never dates - as you'd recognise them - on roman coins, as they used the regnal year system.

The top one reads DN CONSTANTIVS PF AVG and was produced between 337-361, this one being in later style so towards the end of the reign.

The bottom one reads FL CL IVLIANVS P F AVG or DN CL IVLIANVS NOB CAES (or something to that effect, variations exist for both) and was between 361-363.

I recommend against cleaning with tap water. Find some distilled water - tap water has ions in it which will adversely effect the coin given time.

They certainly shouldnt seem magnetic. they are likely Bronze, but the romans at this point were using all sorts for their coins - you can find copper, bronze and occasionally Orichalcum (brass, recycled from old Sestertii). Billon even crops up on rare occasions (silver mixed with bronze), if ebay is to be believed.

Bit curious that they were found in LA...how did that come to be?

found the matches! thanks again!

http://metaldetectingforum.com/show...75791&page=6