Constantine 1 The Great? Has It Been Attributed Correctly?

It's a commemorative issue struck in the late years of the reign of Constantine I and later.

Postscript:

You find it on Wildwinds as:

Sear Roman Coins and their Values [1988 edition] s3894
Urbs Roma Commem AE3/4. AD 330-346. VRBS ROMA, helmeted bust left / wolf and twins, two stars above.

Note: Plenty different examples.

PPS: Always good to know in advance what you are going to buy (except maybe if you taking a gamble on a bargain).

My reference to not finding it in Wildwinds resulted from me going to Wildwinds, Roman, Imperial Coinage by Ruler, Constantine 1 . . . and not finding it.

Co-incidentally, Victor, I DID find reference to it on your page on commemoratives (prior to reading your comment).

Thanks a lot. Some of us who are starting out need a bit of a hand from time to time. We value your input. Bear with us, please?

I have , ski, but I'm danged if I have worked out how to find a coin in them.

Whenever I work out it is NOT there, someone comes up with a listing.

I have been referred to Eric. I've only just worked out that Eric is NOT a man's name but 'e' for electronic and ric for 'Roman Imperial Coin'.
Therefore when I was looking for "Eric's Guide To Roman Coins" I couldn't find it.

Even a Sear's number (on it's own) doesn't help much until you can identify the ruler - or am I doing it all wrong?

We all started somewhere.

I'll outline my process for attributing Roman coins.

First, if there is visible inscription (preferably something that isn't super common, like not "AVG" or "COS X" but something like "PROBU") you can go over to romancoin.info (not romancoinS, but romancoin) and put it in. It'll give you a list of the emperors that they have records of coins with that partial inscription. Make sure to read how to use the wildcard characters. If you can only read a few letters in the middle just put a * before and after what you can read. If there's a letter in the middle you can't figure out put a _. They have examples on the site of how to use it.

If you're lucky you'll have just a couple emperors to look at. You can click on the name and it will show you several actual coins with that emperor. The selection it shows you will be very limited, but if you can make out any of the bust you'll hopefully be able to figure out if you even have the correct emperor or not.

Once you've figured out the emperor (or narrowed it down to a couple) head on over to wildwinds and open up that emperor's page. Hit ctrl-F and look for defining characteristics of your coin. On yours you would be searching for "she wolf" (also probably shewolf and she-wolf), any inscriptions you can identify (though be wary that the coin won't have spaces, but the description will!), even something like the fact that the bust on yours is facing left can sometimes help narrow it down. Over time you'll come to remember the different words that commonly get used and you'll start to be able to pick them out more readily. It is very much a learned skill. You'll also learn to spell cornucopia, because for some reason one in every 5 coins I try to identify has a darn cornucopia on it and somehow they managed to make it through that whole word without an "e" anywhere, but I digress.

At this point you should have a few coins open in tabs, and it's time to just start looking at them. Most of them aren't going to be close, but you'll probably have a couple you need to look at in detail. If you're attributing it it's very important to make mention of any differences between yours and the example. An attribution of "Sear 177" isn't nearly as useful as an attribution of "Sear 177 but with a star in the left field," because as you learn more about coins you can go back and use that information you recorded, or you can get help from other people that will be in a much better position to help you with that information.

So yeah, it can be a time consuming process. I've spent multiple hours trying to attribute a stubborn coin, although I've also gotten lucky and gotten them in almost no time. It's also a process that will get faster the more you do it. I can pick out most emperor's busts now, even on rough coins, just from having looked through so many coins trying to attribute some of mine. But looking through hundreds (thousands) of coins is the only way to build that familiarity, which is why the longer you spend trying to attribute your own coins, especially when it is hard, the better you'll get at it.

Let me add one point to what 'chuy1530' said:




Sometimes when you are sure that it has to be a specific Sear (let's say 359) number you might want to settle for "Sear#359var" until you can go into a more detailed catalogue and if it is close (take the example 'chuy1530' gave) you might specify "as Sear#359 but ...".
Sear gives also reference numbers which you might want to note down in case you want to tidy up the attribution later.
Final note, if you use Sear numbers from one of the printed editions be sure to note down which one you used, the numbers differ significantly between the editions (more being added) - something like Sear(2) or Sear(ME).