Nero Sestertius obverse legend - anyone seen this one?

[lainesnook]

Hello All,

I have recently seen a Nero Sestertius with the following legend;

NERO CLAVDIVS CAES AVG GERM PM TRP IMP PP

I have never seen a Nero Sestertius with this obverse legend - and I can't find it in the fake reports either.

The sellers claim it is a Balkan issue - I have a number of Nero's Balkan Sestertii and the coin does not fit into the regular Balkan characteristics - letter form, no aegis etc.

It is the CAES part that I am concerned with.

I would be most grateful if you could help me out with this one.

Thank you,

Laine

[areich]

Here's the largest picture they have.

[lainesnook]

Hello All,

I have made it back home, and have had a look through my records to see if I could find any Sestertii with this obverse legend.

I found a Balkan with a decursio with foot soldiers, and a Balkan with arch reverse with the same legend.


However, the coin I am looking at (pictured above) has an aegis and doesn't have SC on the reverse???

Has anyone come across this before?


The coin looks well struck on the reverse - do you think the S could have been tooled off?

Has anyone sen a Balkan Sestertii with an aegis?

Lots of questions - hoping for some answers!

Thank you in advance,

Laine

[curtislclay]

By chance I located an untooled specimen of the same coin in CoinArchives Pro: CNG 73, 13 Sept. 2006, 858, see image below.

I think the coin in question is from the same obv. die as the CNG specimen, but the letters of the legend and the hair detail have been clumsily strengthened, and an aegis has been added on the tip of the bust.

The rev. die would appear to be different, but I have little doubt that it originally showed S - C like the CNG coin, but the tooler scraped these letters away.

Certainly Thracian mint, and very rare both for just CAES in the obv. legend as you noticed, and for this early variety of the DECVRSIO type at this mint, but still not a coin I would recommend buying, because of the tooling and alterations!

[lainesnook]

Curtis,

Thank you for your help on this one.

I have noticed that there are a lot of Balkan Sestertii coming into the marketplace in recent years - I have Arch, Decursio with foot soldiers, and Decursio right - I have had Decursio left in the past.

I have seen that there is  Balkan with a left facing bust - allegedly unique - and some years ago I saw a Decursio with Greek legends - are you aware of more than one specimen of these varieties?

Has anyone done any detailed research into the Balkan coinage of Nero??


Please let me know, and thanks again for your help.

Laine

[curtislclay]

Has anyone done any detailed research into the Balkan coinage of Nero?

Not that I know of.

Since the series was only recognized by MacDowall in Num. Chron. 1960, but most of the known specimens have only emerged from the Balkans after 1990, the series is abysmally catalogued in the standard references.

Sutherland in his new RIC (1984), pp. 186-7, merely summarizes MacDowall's findings without listing the coins individually.

RPC I (1992), 1759-1762, appeared too early to take account of the new flood of material from the Balkans, so mainly merely repeats the few varieties known to MacDowall, with MacDowall's illustrations too for the most part.

Little was added in RPC Suppl I, 1998, p. 24, and Supplement 2, Part 1, 2006 (online), p. 39.

My own assemblage of material appearing after 1990 has been haphazard, so not thorough or systematic.

[lainesnook]

Curtis,

Do you think that there will be anything published in the not too distant future?

There does seem to be a lot of rare coins coming out of the Balkans, Nero (claudius 108), Britannicus Sestertii etc.

With regard to Britannicus, what is your view on the dating of the coin?  It has SC, whereas the Nero (claudius 108) has not - do you think it is a Claudius issue or Titus as I have seen in print elsewhere?

If it was a Titus issue, why would the coins only be coming out of the Balkan region?

Please let me have your views.

Thank you,

Laine

[curtislclay]

I am unaware of any impending publications, but that means little, since I don't know what projects numismatists and students around the world are currently working on.

There can be no doubt that the Britannicus sestertii were struck in Thrace under Claudius.

That Titus, a childhood friend of Britannicus', might have struck these coins in connection with his restitution series of earlier bronzes in 80-81, was merely a wild conjecture of Mattingly's, BMC II, p. lxxviii, which is decisively refuted by the parallel bronzes of Nero Caesar and Agrippina II, by the Balkan style and provenance of the coins, and of course by the absence of any legend of Titus on the Britannicus sestertii!

[curtislclay]

Well, they say "Tooled and smoothed", but do not specify that an aegis has been added on the obverse and S C tooled away on the reverse, nor do they cite this Forvm thread or the CNG coin from the same obverse die.

[Jack@]

Hello everyone. I have a polite question for people familiar with coinage of the first centuries, including Emperor Nero? Does the following sesterc fit in the topic of this thread? Or is it a regular issue only with a different location of the letters S-C? Or maybe something else? For interested people, information that the main thread regarding this coin is in the Polish forum zone, at this link: https://www.forumancientcoins.com/board/index.php?topic=124541.0 I will be grateful for any answers.

[curtislclay]

Looks to me like a regular issue, CAESAR in obv. legend, probably mint of Rome with aegis on emperor's neck, but as you say with different placement of S - C on reverse, in lower field rather than upper field as usual.

It's hard to say whether or not this variety has been seen before, since many cataloguers would not consider it important enough to rate its own catalogue number or even to deserve mention in a footnote. After all it was probably just the engraver's choice to move the S C on this one rev. die. So we would need a picture of the coin to identify the variety if it was not pointed out in the text.

[Jack@]

@curtislclay Thank you very much for your quick, specific, concise and comprehensive answer / opinion. Yours sincerely