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Titus semis with Judaea

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Rupert:
Let me show you my most expensive coin ever bought on Ebay. After looking it up on coinarchives and seeing how rare the type is, I couldn't resist it although I had to bleed - I placed a 234.66€ bid 3 sec before the end and won the coin at 233€ against somebody who had made his bid two seconds before me - he / she must have been quite :( or  >:( about it.
I found this coin type with an incomplete description (a sign that the authors only knew one coin!) in Cohen (Titus 225) and RIC (Vesp. 812). Coinarchives.com lists two specimens with different obv. legend, one of which shares the rev. die with my soon-to-be specimen. I had always wanted a Judaea Capta coin, and, if possible, not the Vespasian denarius that everybody has, so I'm very much looking forward to getting it.

Rupert

curtislclay:
That's a substantial price, but actually cheap because the Jewish victory types are so sought after!  You doubtless noted that the two CNG specimens in coinarchives went for multiples of what you paid.  
A reasonable IVDAEA denarius of Vespasian is worth $150 or more, you've paid only double that for a coin hundreds of times rarer!
I wonder if the first CNG coin is the actual specimen cited by Cohen from the coin dealer Rollin.  Its obv. legend breaks off in exactly the same place, T CAESAR IMP P....

Rupert:
Hello Curtis, thank you for your appreciation.
Yes, I saw the prices that these semisses fetched, and the one that only went for five times as much isn't even as good as mine. So I decided I'd have to bid more than 200 Euros. Like you stated, I think that the ordinary Vespasian / Judaea denarii are rather overpaid, due to the obvious and very interesting historical reference. They stand in a line with owls of Athens and Nero denarii - coins that every one knows and everybody wants to have, and which are common yet expensive.
BTW, the description of the semis in CNG sale 64 says that Cohen and RIC refer to a coin in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
Unfortunately, due to my limited resources, after buying this Titus, this is what I had to let go by the next day: an antoninianus of Carus with DEO ET DOMINO obverse. I wouldn't usually have missed it at 158€... That's life, you can't have them all :-\

Best regards,
Rupert

curtislclay:
Regarding coins cited, the CNG note is wrong.  
Cohen quotes a coin from Rollin, and RIC quotes Cohen.  
It is RPC 1483 that cites Oxford, the only specimen recorded there, and Hendin 795a cites RPC.
Too bad you had to let the rare Carus escape!  There was a coin like that in Venera Hoard 4240, apparently same obv. die, same rev. type too but with star in l. field that seems absent on the eBay one.

Rupert:
Yes, the more I think it over, the more I think I really made a mistake. I should have bought the Carus too and maybe sold one or two of my kids ;D. No, seriously, every now and then you have to remember that, alas, there are even more important things in the world than hunting ancient coins.

But I think that I was right anyway to buy the Titus; I don't know how much I would have had to pay for the Carus, and, after all, I got many nice coins of that era (though a DEO ET DOMINO is of course a spectacular thing) but few good Flavians of which this will now be the highlight.

Thank you for the remark about the different specimens and who cites whom. It is certainly possible that this might be the Rollin coin, there will not likely be more specimens of such a rare type with the legend ceasing to be legible at the same point. Is there a picture of the Ashmolean specimen somewhere on the net?

Best regards,
Rupert

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