My first thoughts upon seeing this coin, and this is by no means anything approaching a
firm hypothesis, was that perhaps the engraver may have originally erred in 'his' spelling,
producing "AVGSTI" (with the G and S to either
side of the staff).
Later (or perhaps almost immediately) realising the error, having to remove/obscure/erase
the original S, and then adding the required replacement 'VS' in the limited space remaining
(perhaps shortening the staff at the same time).
This is, of course, little more than wild speculation, and a
bit of fun, but it would be nice to
see whether there are any examples out there that may be from the same die in an earlier,
uncorrected state (if such a thing even exists - which it probably doesn't!).
Some errors are known, I imagine that
Bland would be the best resource for such things.
Walter
