Geta Nobilitas hybrid?

[marinheiro]

Hi

I'm new here so do let me know if I'm doing this the wrong way...

I just bought a Geta denarius. It's not an obvious fake, to me at any rate. The obverse is the young, snub-nosed Geta; the reverse is Nobilitas. That seems to be a common type, but the Nobilitas figure is entirely inside the legend and all the other Geta examples I've found have Nobilitas interrupting the legend. The only similar reverses I've seen are later - the adult Caracalla or  later. Any suggestions?

I'll try attaching two images and see if I can get that to work..

Graham

[curtislclay]

Graham,

Judging from several dozen specimens in CoinArchives Pro, you appear to be correct: this rev. legend is usually broken NOBI - LITAS, with the goddess' head and the top of her scepter coming between the I and the L.

However, that doesn't make your coin a hybrid, just an unusual placement of the legend by at least one engraver on one die. It doesn't change the RIC number, since legend breaks are usually not even recorded in RIC volumes before the Tetrarchs.

On some rev. dies the I - L break is preserved, but the letters are so close together that the legend almost looks unbroken: see example below.

Your coin could well be authentic, but the style and surfaces don't make me 100% convinced. It would be nice to find other comparable examples.

[marinheiro]

Hi Curtis

I found another example with the legend unbroken; it's the second one in this thread:

https://www.forumancientcoins.com/board/index.php?topic=104222.0

I recently started collecting 3rd century silver - and now I'm starting to be unsure  which if any of the ones I've got are real. I can recognise some casts in hand, but don't know how to recognise fakes done in other ways, With this coin I'd say the style looks fine to me, the edge looks normal, but the surface on the obverse looks suspiciously smooth. Metal looks like tarnished silver (the yellow cast in the photos is from the lighting), but the tarnishing is very uniform on the low surfaces and any high points are all shiny, even on the edges, which seems a little odd.  There are no scratch marks at all, Weight is 3.20 grammes.

Can you pin down what it is that looks wrong to you?

Thanks

Graham

[curtislclay]

The details are a little soft.

However, the edge cracks look convincing. And the dies are authentic, since Lerian's coin that you point out seems to be from the same rev. die as yours!

Could still be a struck fake from dies derived mechanically from a genuine coin. But in that case other examples from the same die pair should be showing up. If that doesn't happen, I'd say your coin is very probably authentic.