Victorinus Mint II Salus Aug with IMPCPVICT... obverse

[Adrianus]

Hello all,

Another odd Victorinus to complement the left facers on Coin of the day. Not so spectacular but an odd coin. Known from one specimen apart from this (was it Chalfont?). The coin would seem to be transitional between the IMP C PI VICTORINVS issues at Mint II and the IMP C VICTORINVS issues that follow them. The legend is not, as far as I know, published apart from this. Oddly enough ( ) this was the first Victorinus I ever bought and I didn't even notice the obverse legend aberration until months later... An IMP C PI VICT type shown for comparison.

IMP C P VICTORINVS P F AVG; Cuirassed radiate bust right
SALVS AVG, Salus standing right, serpent in arms

[Pscipio]

Nice coin(s)! Could it be, however, just an engravers error instead of a transitional legend?

Lars

[Adrianus]

Hi Lars,

Yes, I suppose there's no way of knowing. The fact it is so rare could be argued to militate against it being an actual issue, being instead, as you suggest, a die-engraver's error. One thing, however; the Normanby hoard catalogue shows AEQVITAS AVG as belonging to Issue I and SALVS AVG to Issue II. Issue I has IMP C PI VICTORINVS and Issue II IMP C VICT... with very rare mules both ways (IMPCPIVICT/Salus, IMPCVICT/Aequitas). Thus IMP C PI VICT with Salus would be a very rare mule in any case; were our IMP C P VICT with Aequitas I would go with engraver's error. With Salus, I wonder if this is a shortening of the IMP C PI legend right at the start of Issue II, almost an experiment before dropping the whole of Victorinus' other nomina... A tricky one...

Adrianus

[Pscipio]

with very rare mules both ways (IMPCPIVICT/Salus, IMPCVICT/Aequitas)

Yes, they seem to be very rare. According to my scources, Cunetio has 16 IMP C PI VICT.../SALVS AVG (8 of them with Marius-portrait), Normamby has 5 (4 with Marius-portrait), Göblingen and Minster each had another one (compared to 2197 without PI). From IMP C VICT.../AEQVITAS AVG, there were 3 in Normamby and 7 in Cunetio (compared to 148 with PI, 124 of them with Marius-portrait).

I guess we'll never know. Anyway, even if it would "only" be an engraving error on a mule, it would still be a very rare coin.

Lars