For Sale

Occasionally I want to have a bit of a clear out and now is one of those times. I've added a "FOR SALE" link underneath my avatar that will take you to a site that is hosting a few of my items for sale. The site holds auctions but, for the items I've listed, the prices are fixed so the price you see is the price you pay (plus postage). Payment is by PAYPAL only. All items are guaranteed genuine and as described.

A late Sestertius of Severina

Many people incorrectly call this bronze coin of Severina an As, rather than a Sestertius which it should properly be known as. This is perhaps the last substantive issue of the Roman bronze denomination, the swansong of a denomination that limped on sporadically from this period to the coinage reform of Diocletian and Maximianus in the period 294-6 (yes, I know the original sestertii were silver). This issue was accompanied by a double Sestertius and an issue of Denarii.

Severina was the wife of the Roman emperor Aurelian (270-5), although she only appears on the later coins of the reign, after the base silver reform in c.274 AD.

As an aside this photo has been taken with the light at a different angle to previous shots of mine in that a more vertical angle, rather than transverse or oblique angle, has been used. It's produced a reasonable image of a coin with somewhat rough surfaces.

MA Thesis, "Constantine the Great: the Coins Speak

On a numismatic message board that I visit, albeit one that I am not a regular contributor to, I came across an interesting thread where one of the members had placed a link to his recently successfully examined MA thesis from the Middle Tennessee State University.

The work on the bronze coinage of Constantine I examined the political motives behind some of the coin types chosen and their historical significance, as well as bringing in historical sources and metallurgical analyses.

Whilst one might want to debate some of the phrasing used and some of the ideas expanded I think the work has some interesting points to make and is amply illustrated to reinforce the discussions, without it becoming a picture book.

The author is to be commended for making his work so available and free of charge, I know my post graduate thesis is not available on such generous terms (although it is available from the publishers, Archaeopress, for around £30).

Yet instead of being congratulated on the message board he has been the subject of an extremely vigorous cross questioning of his ideas in what seems such an unfriendly manner, an examination much more hostile than many a research student's formal viva! Don't get me wrong, question ideas by all means but don't bite the hand that feeds. Such a shame as he is now regretting posting the link in the first place.

If you want to read what Victor Clark has to say on the coins of Constantine the Great his thesis can be downloaded HERE.

A junk box quarter thaler of 1624

I always scour junk boxes at coin fairs, containers that hold cheap coins in bulk that are a fixed price. In one such box last weekend I came across a renaissance silver coin, 28mm in diameter and dated 1624 priced at £4.

I buy such items for the "enjoyment" of puzzling what they are and, after a little gentle cleaning, I was able to identify it as a quarter thaler of Sigismund III, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, 1587-1632. He was also ruler of Sweden between 1592-99.

The word "thaler" later got corrupted and morphed into the word "dollar", still the unit of currency in so many parts of the world.

The portrait, sadly half flat, shows the crowned king with a large ruff around his neck, fashion of the age, remember the portraits of Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh, wearing his armour and holding a vertical sword.

The Wikipedia page on Sigismund III can be found HERE.

An update……

Oh well, the Byzantine medallion in my post of 9th December last year went unsold. You can still grab yourself a bargain as it is on offer for sale at $1,900,000!

Personally I’m not surprised that this lot did not find a buyer. Money aside it is a rather specialised item that there can’t be many potential purchasers for.

A not so mundane denarius of Marcus Aurelius

Sometimes the most mundane of issues turns out to be far from it. Take the above coin for example, purchased from an unremarkable stock of Roman coins at a price that was, I suppose, in the buyer’s favour.

A silver denarius of Marcus Aurelius (or the Richard Harris character in the film Gladiator), it looks like it should be simple to catalogue but I could not locate this in RIC volume 3;

M ANTONINVS AVG
Laureate bust right

TRP XXXII IMP VIIII COS III PP
Salus seated left holding branch, serpent at feet to left.

Having posted an image on the FORVM message board it was Curtis Clay who came up with the explanation that this is a mule, a mixing of an incorrect pairing of dies or punches that were used to make the coin;

“The type seems to be Salus seated l., holding branch above snake coiled on ground and raising head before the goddess' knees.

Exactly that type is known:

(a) With obverse legend M ANTONINVS AVG as on your coin, but reverse legend COS III P P, RIC 425, 15 specimens in Reka Devnia hoard.

(b) With obverse legend M AVREL ANTONINVS AVG, reverse exactly as your coin, TR P XXXII IMP VIIII COS III PP, RIC 385, 58 specimens in the Reka Devnia hoard.

It is perfectly plausible that an old obverse die with legend M ANTONINVS AVG, meant to go with reverses labelled COS III P P, lasted into the next issue, when the reverses had returned to a fully dated legend.

However, judging from the sequence of the types, which I tried to work out in a diagram some twenty years ago, Marcus' TR P XXXII had already begun when the shortened obverse legend M ANTONINVS AVG was introduced, and it was in the course of that issue with the shortened obverse legend, Marcus still being TR P XXXII, that the Salus seated type was introduced.”

The two components (undated Salus with the short obverse legend / dated Salus with the long obverse legend) that make up this coin are not uncommon if the statistics of the contents of the Reka Devnia hoard are an accurate reflection of the rarity of the types. However, this would appear, on admittedly only a scant literature search, to be the first recorded example of this combination (short obverse / dated Salus reverse) of types.

Filey Roman signal station

Whilst in Filey on the Yorkshire coast over a snowy New Years Eve 2009 I grabbed a couple of pictures of the stones excavated from the Roman signal station at Filey.


The station, built during the late fourth century AD, is an unusual, late structure from Roman Britain and was positioned on "the Brigg", a promentary being eroded by the sea and following the (last, during the 1990's?) excavation of the site five foundation stones were relocated to some ornamental gardens in the town.


As noted on the interpretation board the central stone has a carving of a dog chasing a stag running left.

This can be hard to see, even when it's right in front of you, so I've just painted around the outline in the following photograph.

There were other similar stations forming a chain on the Yorkshire coast and I've also visited the remains of the ones at Scarborough and Goldsborough. The one at Ravenscar unfortunately disappeared under the construction of Raven Hall and the one at Huntcliff sadly fell into the sea after being re-excavated during the 1960's.

Below is an artist's impression of what they might have looked like, although the (post?) holes in the foundation stones suggest that there might have been a significant amount of timber in their construction.