Posted 08/04/2014 2:56 pm
Good spot. A lot of emperors issued the exact same design with the same legend - ADVENTVS AVG (arrival of the emperor) - Carausius' celators, doing their best with no real training, likely copied it initially from a coin of an earlier emperor like Phillip. Its actually a quite common design as far as they go for Carausius but they still sell for hundreds of pounds. This is because the design was initially issued when Carausius took Britain - it is literally the arrival of the Usurper, and so holds a key event in Britains history in its design.
The rarer coin, which is rarely seen (one was on ebay not long ago, sold for a big wad of dough) is the EXPECTATE VENI (Come, oh awaited one - more literally 'the arrival of the expected') which records the supposed glee of the British people to ruled by someone who cared about the Island and didnt treat them like morons (Carausius had some very interesting stuff on his coins, including references to classical literature).
The rarer coin, which is rarely seen (one was on ebay not long ago, sold for a big wad of dough) is the EXPECTATE VENI (Come, oh awaited one - more literally 'the arrival of the expected') which records the supposed glee of the British people to ruled by someone who cared about the Island and didnt treat them like morons (Carausius had some very interesting stuff on his coins, including references to classical literature).
