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.

What recession and other musings – the case of Gemini VI

I was sent a copy of the Gemini VI sale catalogue yesterday in “dead tree” format (excellent, you can’t beat having these in hard copy), although it is available to browse online HERE.

A good selection of Greek, Roman (imperial and provincial) coins on offer, although sadly, or perhaps fortunately, no Carausius to tempt me.

The star of the sale though, whatever your interests, has to be the Byzantine gold medallion of Tiberius II Constantine (pictured above) with an estimate of $2,500,000, and this got me thinking about the global recession and what the potential market would be for such a piece of “bling”.

Only yesterday a Rembrandt and a Raphael sold in London for a total approaching £50,000,000, the Raphael, estimated at £16 million and making £29.2 million being a record for a work on paper, demonstrating that there is still money available to invest in works of art.

I was also intrigued by the actual description of the medallion, in particular the state of preservation being described as ” Two parts of the original frame had become separated and the medallion itself had a slightly wavy surface. These have been resolved as were two very minor scrapes”. How much work has been done, when and what did it look like before? Such restoration work has provoked much comment on message boards with quite divided opinions when they have come to light in the past. I’m pleased that this work has been noted in the description and I wonder whether it really does materially affect the article’s value in either direction? Some would argue that restoration would reduce its worth while others the enhanced beauty would increase it.

I, for one, will be looking for the outcome of the Gemini sale and the result of this piece in particular. Will there be a buyer or not and at what price?

Pescennius Niger and Oliver Wendell Holmes

The coins of Pecennius Niger, the eastern challenger to the Roman throne in AD 193, exhibit three characteristics, rarity, desirability and ugliness. One of my two examples, illustrated above certainly exhibits the latter characteristic (my other example being much worse). These features were used by Oliver Wendell Holmes in his 1872 work The Poet at the Breakfast Table which features a conversation with an entomologist:

"What a superb butterfly you have in that case! -

-O, yes, yes, well enough. These Lepidoptera are for children to play with. Give me a Coleoptera, and the kings of the Coleoptera are the beetles! -

The particular beetle he showed me was an odious black wretch that one would kick out of his path, if he did not serve him worse than that. But he looked at it as a coin collector would look at a Pescennius Niger.

-A beauty!-he exclaimed, -and the only specimen of the kind in this country, to the best of my belief. A unique, sir, and there is pleasure in exclusive posession. Not another beetle like that short of South America, sir -"

Whilst I cannot claim unique I was pleased to acquire this specimen, it being a variety not fully as the description in RIC, the closest attribution I can give is cf 23-5.

My wretched second specimen, below, is RIC 5.

Another Royal Mint quality control problem.....

I was passed this 2008 penny on Sunday. It has a raised blob before the date. Not the first one that I've seen. I haven't picked at it to determine whether it is a die fault or whether it is the bronze surface lifting from the iron core.

New 20p problems....

The Royal Mint do seem to be having problems with the quality control of their new coins. Besides the well popularised undated mule of old obverse and new reverse dies for the 20p there appear to be production problems.

I came across this coin in change the other day that looks to have been made from an obverse die that was breaking up or suffering from some damage that resulted in two raised lines coming down from the queen's nose.

On top of that there is evidence of die clogging on the reverse obscuring some of the raised pellets that border the shield.