Carausian Silver + The Rouen Mint

I was happy to pick up these 7 Carausii for £12. A previous owner has tripped the patinas off so getting good pictures of the individual coins isn't easy, so I've gone for the 'pile' approach.

The nicest of the lot is from the mint at Rotomagus (modern day Rouen) which retains fairly good detail and is a representative example of the bust style from this short lived mint. The crude work and big nose makes issues from this mint easily recognisable. The reverse is Mars. This is the coin on the left in the picture. The attribution of this mint to Rotomagus is about as solid as the attribution of the 'C' mint to Camulodunum, but what is clear is that this coinage was issued on the continent and for only a short time at the very start of Carausius' rule - it is sometimes called the 'Continental Mint'. It has also been suggested that the mint should be attributed to Boulogne.

When I bought them, I expected that all the coins would be copper, but one had the light brassy colour associated with billon. I made a small testcut through a patch of remaining patina in one of the cracks which revealed the core was actually a clean silver colour. The brassy colour might have been a side effect of the electrolysis process - it took only a couple of minutes in room temperature citric acid to bring the silver colour out. It isn't easy to get a Carausian silver coin, so I'm very pleased - even if it is a bit battered.