FORVM`s Classical Numismatics Discussion Board
Numismatic and History Discussion Forums => Coin of the Day => Topic started by: slokind on March 07, 2010, 03:40:22 am
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Though I can't imagine that I never posted this before, this is a new photo, and here it is, just to prove that I don't like only baby pictures. Carausius himself could envy this image. Imagine what Caracalla would have looked like by his late father's age.
For the reverse type, cf. HrJ 6.18.38.4, though evidently not the same die and with a different obverse die.
Calling Tyche Euposia with the infant on her l. arm is familiar rather from Diadumenian, but the infant is even plainer here. I say, 'his late father', because Ulpainus was the last governor to issue coins for Septimius. From Quintilian we have these studpendous portraits surrounded by extremely portentous titles.
I daresay this is the best Caracalla coin that I have.
It is 25mm and weighs 8.63g, axis 6h.
Pat L.
Click to 1000 pixels width
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:o :o :o
The chance for a bronze coin to survive the ages in such a fine condition is very small.
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That is a stunning portrait. And look at the thick neck - the implication is of a body like Hercules
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Wonderful!
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That is an absolutly beautiful coin Pat!
Chris
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A beauty! A well-fed Caracalla but with a ruthless eye.
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These coins must have looked like pure gold, which they are still worth in this condition ;D
Wonderful Pat!
Frans
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Holy cow! George S.
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Well, they've all said it, but... WOW! Amazing portrait, wonderfully tan patina, detailed reverse... A treasure of a coin! I don't keep pics of provincials, usually, but I've already made a copy of your beautiful photo for my Caracalla files.
Regards,
Ignasi
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Well, PIOS Ox, anyway. Yes, I love the coin.
Thank you all.
I got it in 2003, and the seller, Teresa Darling, did grade it "XF to AU", and she is neither an unwitting nor a rapacious person; I always have liked both her coins and her pricing, but I do not remember what I paid for it (did not record price, and 2003 receipts were on the old, old computer, and I don't know how to decipher her code), but certainly not the price of gold: perhaps about $200, because it was bought on a whim, well informed but not a 'necessary' purchase. Well informed:
1. I was and still am curious about the engraving tools used increasingly in the first half of the 3rd century; parts of the Tyche look as if they were done with a hot V chisel in butter!
2. It is a coin that shows both the color of the metal, bare but not by stripping, and a sound patina—a patina that actually has luster, not wax, on the reverse field.
3. It is a Tyche with the large infant on her arm that shows that it is not confined, in Moesia Inf., to Diadumenian. Yet Pick himself did not see it, nor anyone else, even Gospodin Jekov, who notices much that others have missed, until the MacDia studies alerted us to it.
4. I wondered about the pattern of patination: I suspect that it came from a sealed enclosure in which some new coins were tightly stacked. Only if I knew the date of its discovery (which could be years and years before I got it) could I go looking for others of the same date, end of Caracalla, that were less emphatically 'piebald' and so ended up in hard-copy catalogues. Of course, this coin might be the only one that by chance looks this way.
But my taste for Quintilian issues took time to develop. I think that all of us at first tend to like a dandified Septimius and an adorable brat. These coins took even an old art historian time to divorce them from the specter of living with the persons in the portraits.
Pat L.
attached: some of the tool traces that are interesting
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wow! wonderful coin
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I cannot but echo the above praise for this beautiful coin. In hand it must be spectacular.
Awesome indeed.
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I'm so proud to share Caracalla from Markianopolis with Tyche Euposia on reverse which I could recently add to my collection. It is from the same dies as Pat's wonderful coin but lacks a bit of her details. Nevertheless a nice one!
Jochen