Two rare British Victory dupondii of Car. and Geta

[curtislclay]

1. Caracalla,

ANTONINVS - PIVS AVG BRIT, bust radiate r., fold of cloak on shoulder.

VICT BRIT TR P XIIII COS III S - C, Victory standing r. inscribing shield set on palm tree.

Struck early in 211, before the news of Septimius' death at York on 4 Feb. 211 reached Rome, since Caracalla is TR P XIIII but not yet P P.

This coin was published by Cohen 644, but only by mistake:  he gives BRIT in the obv. legend, but cites a coin that OMITS that BRIT, Num. Chron. 1874, p. 86, pl. XV.2.

Since then a number of specimens have emerged WITHOUT BRIT on obv., like the one referred to by Cohen, strictly speaking mules struck from an old obv. die, since BRIT had been accorded to the three emperors in the course of 210, the preceding year.

This dupondius with BRIT in the obv. legend, however, was unknown in any actual specimen, as opposed to Cohen's mistaken description, until the coin pictured below came up in 2004, when I purchased it.  The coin is also of interest for showing a dupondius obv. die of Caracalla that I had not known before.

2. Geta,

P SEPT GETA - PIVS AVG BRIT, bust radiate r., fold of cloak on shoulder.

VICTORIAE BRITTANNICAE S C, Victory seated l. on two shields, balancing another shield on her knee as though to inscribe it, and holding palm branch in l. hand.

This type is known on corresponding asses of Geta, but this is the first dupondius.  I purchased it from Spink's recent sale of the Vogelaar Roman British Collection, which also furnished Mauseus with the jugate Carausius and Sol antoninianus which he has shown us. 

This identical specimen first emerged in London about 35 years ago, when Simon Bendall saw it and made a plaster cast of it to give to me for my die study, and also showed it to Philip Hill and the BM, whence it is reported in the second edition of Hill's Severan book, 1977, no. 1225, and in the revised edition of BMC V, 1975, p. 626, no. 235A (failing to record the fold of cloak on the shoulder of the portrait).

This dupondius obv. die of Geta was new to me at the time, but I see in CoinArchives that it is now known with another rev. type, FORT RED TR P III COS II S C, also shown below, dating to early 211 just like Caracalla's dupondius above.

The VICTORIAE BRITTANNICAE rev. die of Geta's dupondius is also known to me in combinations with two obv. dies of Caracalla for asses.

[whitetd49]

Curtis, wonderful acquisitions!

I apologize for diverting your thread but I note similarities with these issues and some enigmatic issues from Stobi.  It is a far remove, but these radiate busts are very reminicent of some rare radiate bust (with no die links) types.  They are certainly not VICT BRIT issues but now I suspect they were produced early in Caracalla's sole reign, after the death of Geta (early 211) as propaganda issues.  Geta is never depicted with a radiate bust at Stobi.  I suspect that these were produced in late 211-212.  I thought that they could have been produced later but there are just no die links with the later more well known emissions.

[curtislclay]

Tom,

Sounds like a difficult problem!

The radiate crown, assuming Stobi copied it from Rome, would of course not give a link to 211, since dupondii with radiate crowns were struck fairly frequently, at least once a year, from 211 to 215.  In 216-7 there were very few, I know only one specimen that has survived.

So for the date you'd have to rely on facial features, a difficult criterion when comparing coins struck by two different mints!

[curtislclay]

Thanks to Raeticus on the German Numismatikforum, I was recently able to acquire another rare dupondius of Geta from the same issue, differing from no. 2 above mainly in the fact that the rev. type is dated, showing

VICT BRIT TR P III COS II S C instead of VICTORIAE BRITTANNICAE S C,

plus on the obverse there is no fold of the cloak on Geta's shoulder and the legend is unbroken, rather than broken GETA - PIVS.

This is the normal obverse die with this exact legend, already known with two other reverse types,

PONTIF TR P III COS II S C, Abundantia dropping grain to two children

FORT RED TR P III COS II S C, Fortuna Redux seated l.,

BMC pl. 62.6-7.

The dated VICT BRIT seated type had previously been known on dupondii of Geta in this issue with the variant obv. legend SEPTIMIVS (specimens in BM from my first coll. and in Copenhagen), but not with SEPT as on the present coin.

[curtislclay]

The flan crack and the pits on the emperor's forehead and especially on the reverse of the coin, which on the coin itself blend in much better and are less distracting, were the reason I was able to acquire the coin: these faults had formerly been very skillfully REPAIRED until Raeticus had suspicions, put the coin in acetone overnight, and rediscovered them!

The coin had been in the collection of a friend of Raeticus' who wanted only EF coins, and who after Raeticus' discovery graciously agreed to pass the coin on to me for much less than he had paid for it. (The Before and After images were both taken by Raeticus and posted on Numismatikforum.)

[rexesq]

Wow, that is certainly quite interesting, the before and after shots.
All the dupondii you have posted are beautiful. A very interesting area of the hobby.

[Aulus Allienus]

Sorry.

[curtislclay]

A second specimen of the dupondius of Caracalla shown above in my first post, from the same obv. die, rev. of  same type but from a different die, from Savoca E11, 18 Dec. 2016, lot 627, 15.18g, axis 1 o'cl., minor tooling and smoothing, dealer's pictures below, with repeated picuture of the first example for comparison: