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 Replies: 13 / Views: 1,473 |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
6130 Posts |
Last new purchase for a while, as I shift my focus to downsizing and narrowing my collection. Caracalla 213-217 AR Denarius Laureate head right, having an especially bad day ANTONINVS PIVS AVG GERM Liberalitas standing, holding abacus and cornucopiae. LIBERAL AVG VIIII RIC 302   Probably paid way too much for this one, but I couldn't pass up one of the best coins I had seen that actually captures the man's trademark scowl:  A very welcome addition to my portrait collection! |
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Pillar of the Community
 United States
5029 Posts |
Great looking coin. And stank face is right! Looks like someone is about to get a beat down.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
616 Posts |
Nice pick up. What a thug!
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Moderator
United States
23731 Posts |
Super coin, I would have hate to been on the wrong side of this guy.
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Moderator
United States
34428 Posts |
great coin-I'm interested to see where you focus moving forward. from wikipedia: Quote:
The expenditures that Caracalla had through his large donatives to soldiers prompted him to debase the coinage soon after his ascension. At the end of Severus' reign and early into Caracalla's the roman denarius had an approximate silver purity of around 55% but by the end of his reign the purity of a denarius had been reduced to about 51%.
In 215 Caracalla introduced the antoninianus, a coin which was intended to serve as a double denarius. This new currency, however, had a silver purity of about 52% for the period between 215 and 217, which was in effect about equal to 1.5 denarii. The reduced silver purity of the coins caused people to hoard the old coins that had higher silver content purity which made the inflation problem caused by the devaluing of the denarii worse than it already was. "If you climb a good tree, you get a push."
-----Ghanaian proverb
"The danger we all now face is distinguishing between what is authentic and what is performed."
-----King Adz
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Pillar of the Community
United States
836 Posts |
Lovely coin, I am also curious on what your next collecting pursuit might be and what coins you will move on from.
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Pillar of the Community
Spain
629 Posts |
The "Abacus" that is hold by Liberalitas really was like a ping pong racket with a number of deppresions carved on it...
so as example, if you was going to give ten denarius to each citizen you used an "abacus" with ten depresions and introduced that "racket" in a great bag plenty of denarius, when you picked up the racket it had one coin in each deppresion so you saved a lot of time avoiding the need of counting each time...
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Pillar of the Community
United States
7066 Posts |
Great coin!  |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1609 Posts |
Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed... and stayed like that for thousands of years...
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Pillar of the Community
 United States
6130 Posts |
Thanks all!
As for the current state and future of my collection, I just need to downsize before I can really continue building. Too many half-completed projects, and a very significant amount of money tied up in by catch from many, many lots purchased to get that one or two coins for very cheap.
Right now I am feeling the urge to try to build a budget set of Roman emperors and family--saving some money by *just* going for the portrait, even with a weak reverse or some off-flan lettering. I got as far as I can reasonably expect to get with uncleaned lots, so now the path forward will be maybe one bigger purchase (Tiberius, Titus, Domitian, Nerva, etc) one every one or two months as I can free up some capital.
But before I can really get into the swing of that, I have a very large collection of Indian coins that I am doing some research on, hoping to make my small step to grow the numismatic knowledge on the series. Life is busy and there's not a lot of time to just sit, organize, read, and think.
This Caracalla was just too good to pass up, though. Can't remember the last one I saw with brow lines and a scrunched nose from making that face so much!
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Pillar of the Community
Russian Federation
5177 Posts |
Quote:
The "Abacus" that is hold by Liberalitas really was like a ping pong racket with a number of deppresions carved on it...
so as example, if you was going to give ten denarius to each citizen you used an "abacus" with ten depresions and introduced that "racket" in a great bag plenty of denarius, when you picked up the racket it had one coin in each deppresion so you saved a lot of time avoiding the need of counting each time... Can't be bothered googling for it (too busy following the US election), but I've read in a thread about smallest coins (not on CCF, and sadly I don't recall exactly where) that in parts of India things very much like what you describe were still in use as late as the 19th century. They had images too (those things are quite pretty) - of course the Indian objects had a much larger amount of holes than ten, because the coins they counted were significantly smaller. |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
6130 Posts |
Like this?  (Thanks by the way, Athalbert; I probably never would have second guessed the attribution on Wildwinds) Same concept, but different rationale; the counting boards were critical because fanams are just so gosh darned hard to handle; averaging 7-9mm and 0.3g. These boards were apparently used by dropping a handful and shaking it until the holes were full. I have a small assortment from a variety of princely states:  Edited by Finn235
11/09/2016 09:58 am
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Pillar of the Community
Spain
629 Posts |
Yes! that is an abacus like are usually depicted on roman coinage on the image you can see a distribution of money on a sestertius of Nero...  Edited by Athalbert
11/09/2016 5:48 pm
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Pillar of the Community
Spain
629 Posts |
Some times you can guess how much money was given to each soldier or citizen counting the number of "holes" of the abacus...    In the upper sestertius of Marcus Aurelius we can see the emperor heading the distribution of money while an officer gives the money to one citizen, note how the citizen opens his toga making a sort of bag where the coins are thrown into... Edited by Athalbert
11/09/2016 5:57 pm
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Replies: 13 / Views: 1,473 |
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Posted 11/08/2016 4:12 pm
