Help With A Sassanian, Gadhaiya Silver Coin ?

Very nice! Must have been under an unusual listing title to slip under my radar

That is at the very end of series 1.2 - I like to call it the Neanderthal Portrait type, for obvious reasons. This is the type that bridges the gap to the curved head type, you can see the attendants' bodies now run in parallel with the arm, and the reverse is almost back to fitting on the coin.

I actually picked up a really fun example, albeit for a lot more than $3!

Just picked up these two...Good silver content...

Ok lets see if I've learnt anything here! Both coins are from Finns series 4.
Top coin.....Series 4 / Sub-type 3 Intermediate style?
Bottom coin..Series 4 / Sub-type 4 Degenerate?

Fingers crossed!

Just picked this one up...looks like Finns Series 5 - Vaghela Type http://goccf.com/t/276704&whichpage=4
15mm diameter/4.49 grams..Low silver content

Absuletely in love with these coins. Yours are breathtaking. I only have 4..



Also, an ID would be very welcome. :D

Awesome!

Recent pick up the 'dumbell nose' type.

This is in nice condition with what seems to be a good silver content..14mm/4.05gr

I'm assuming this is from Finns series 1.6.3 with no face.

Steve just how rare are these?

Nice pick up! I won several from the same seller as well.

These types are hard to assess, although I would agree that I believe they are rare. Maheshwari didn't document a single one of them, although I think all of his ~200 odd coins were from a single hoard.

I think that maybe 4-5 small groups of these have come up for sale in the past decade?

Searching online, I found a handful in a virtual collection site that listed upload dates of about 2012. I think that ACSB bought into the hoard, and still have some for sale. That hoard is likely also where you and I bought a few coins from this series back in early 2017. The seller that I bought the 1.11 circle lips coins from also had a couple of these, and I have seen them for sale from the usual suspects out of India at least on two separate occasions since 2016. I'd estimate maybe 75-150 specimens floating around in collections currently?

It's an interesting conundrum - someone sent me a link to a recent presentation that John Deyell did on the composition of these pieces - it is publicly available on the Facebook page for the Oriental Numismatic Society of North America. The gist of Deyell's findings is that nearly all Indo Sassanian coins are surface-enriched; some of his coins that tested as ~80% fine on the surface via XRF testing were only ~20% fine in the core. I suspect that even these coins in bright flashy silver could just be like the bright flashy antoninianii of the late 3rd century Rome - just hiding a core of low grade billon, albeit with a thicker outer layer. I still need to image all of my examples of this type, but I did recently nab a couple that bridge the composition gap, although not the stylistic one...


First is stylistically a regular 1.6.4, but appears to be in "good" silver

Note the highly stylized ear, simplified fire altar, and the addition of dots in the middle of the lines of the altar bowl and base

And this one stylistically ought to be at the tail end of the series, but this one is a dull grey but visibly more than 2% silver.

Here the ear is replaced with a short Nagari phrase - Maheshwari reads "Srila" - "(He who) has Sri (majesty/splendor)"