My Very Nice Diocletian

The obverse image is on the dark side. How about taking the coin outside in natural light to photograph. I find I get much better pictures that way.

From all that I can see, this looks like a coin I woulk love to have in my own collection. Very nice detail, well struck and well preserved. Good round flan. I'm impressed.

I don't want you to tell how much you paid, but I'd be very curious in what price range. I'm thinking of selling some of mine so I can continue to buy more. Perhaps those of us interested could set up a barter system. You know. Kinda like when I was a child (I think Tiberius was emperor about then. Or was it Caligula?) when we used to trade baseball cards in an attempt to get all the players on your favorite team. Anyway, just a thought.

Once again, your coin is extremely nice. Thanks for sharing.

JW

Yes, I've looked at it, but its mostly modern coins and someone like me has to wade through a lot of coins in which I just have no interest. Perhaps one of the moderators can either point me in the right direction or set up a trading/selling forum just for Ancients.

JW

That is a very nice Diocletian antoninianus. We need to review a point here. Jango's coin is a pre-reform antoninus and will be found in RIC volume V with all the pre-reform material. It was issued with a silver wash to remind people that the alloy contained one part silver and 20 parts copper which is indicated on the coin by the XXI in exergue. It was workshop B=2. At this point Antioch mint was not spelled out on the coins.

jw's coin is harder to read but I believe I see KB (Cyzicus shop 2) in the reverse field and nothing in exergue. That would mean that it is not an antoninianus but what we call a post-reform radiate. It was made as a fractional denomination of the large follis. There was a less common half of it with laureate portrait. I believe the radiate was 2/5 of the follis. Post reform radiates contained no silver (or an accidental trace), were not silver washed and never have XXI or KA (Greek for XXI) on the coin. Like all post reform Diocletian coins it will be in RIC volume VI. The large folles were still made silver bearing but rather few of them have the XXI.

I'll attach an image for comparison:




My antoninianus is a different workshop (5+4=9 because the number 9 was theta and considered bad luck alone as the initial of death). My radiate is from Heraclea (H), workshop 4 (delta). It is very common to find the two denominations listed improperly and beginning users of RIC will have trouble finding their coins if they are looking in the wrong volume. Very rarely you may see a post reform radiate with silver wash but that was added by a crooked coin dealer trying to make his coins more saleable. Neither version is worth more than the other in equal grade.

All the above applies not only to Diocletian but to the other rulers in the first tetrarchy (Maximianus Augustus, Galerius Caesar and Constantius Caesar). There are other reverses for each denomination but most of them are not seen both ways. I assume that means that Concordia Militum was the type being struck when the switch over was made.

Interesting Doug, while were talking about Diocletian here is mine:



It has quite a lot of silvering but its not as well struck as Jangos and is missing quite a bit of detail around the centre on the reverse. This is the main reason for me posting it really - I've never been able to 100% ID it. I think its either Antioch or Cyzicus with Iota between the figures. If I remember rightly I've always had trouble getting the legend break to match known examples. Can anyone shed any light on this?

Just thought I'd add that I think the reverse detail has been missing since it was struck as there is silvering in the depression on that part of the coin. The rest of the missing silvering seems to have been knocked off the high points of the coin during normal wear and tear.

The picture is as good if not better than in hand JW. All that can be seen is the start of a vertical line.

Mine is from Antioch? Thought it was from Cyzicus, I checked Wildwinds when I got it and I identified it as RIC 306, and Wildwinds has Cyzicus mint in the description. I'm open to the possibility though that it's a mistake or it's outdated. Or that I misidentified it, but my coin is a dead-ringer for that second RIC 306 picture.

How very interesting that this coin is so common! I have one too. The photos are terrible! I snapped them quickly to share here, without taking the time to set them up properly. It doesn't help that the sun has already set for the day.