FORVM`s Classical Numismatics Discussion Board
Numismatic and History Discussion Forums => Ancient Coin Forum => Topic started by: mwilson603 on August 27, 2007, 08:42:01 pm
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Hi All,
We talk so often and passionately about the coins we love. Some from a standpoint of "What an amazing leader" is personified on the coin, some from a "This coin represents one of those incredibly significant moments in time" view, and some from a "It is truly a thing of beauty" positions. The latter being the main conversation piece in the COTD threads.
There are of course other reasons for loving your favourite coin. However, what I want to know is what your antithesis coin is? If you had a time machine and the ability to make one trip to any time and during that trip you could remove the plans for one coin type, what would that coin type be and why?
The reasons are likely to be mainly "It's plain ugly", but it could just as easily be the removal of that one coin you know that you will never own and you want to take away the frustration. All reasons for removing the coin from the passage of time are welcome.
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Very thought-provoking. I would probably just go back and give the moneyers full sized-planchets. ;D
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well, strictly as a matter of personal taste, the Constantinian era 2 soldiers 1 or 2 standard reverse is really boring, although some of the early quadrans are terribly unimaginative. And the crayon like designs on the Leo/Johannes/Zeno group could go too.
I could do no better myself, as I can only draw a fairly highly sophisitcated stick man at best - like a bad Victory on a Tetricus barb :laugh:... Joe
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Yep, I'm with you on the 2 soldier ones. Not wanting to upset anyone collecting in this area but I had those in mind as the "most boring" along with the campgates :laugh:
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These are nothing compared to '3 standards' from Nicaiea and the Viminacium 'bull and lion'.
The 'SC surrounded by wreath' is next.
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All byzantine "cup" coins get my vote. Plain ugly and schematic - at least for me (yes yes I know - they are beautiful for theri collectors ;) )
5t century small bronzes are also a pain to look at sometimes.
Couldn't we just stop our time machine somewher in the Hellenistic world? Syracuse, for example?? 8)
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Personally I would go to the French Medal Mint c1900 and hit the director with a 2 by 4 with a nail in it until he agreed to maintain artistic standards and not allow 'modern' styles to completely overtake the mint, which in turn spread to the rest of the world. The Paris mint was until quite recently the numismatic centre of the universe, where they went all followed, andin the case of the embrace of modern srtistic styles, numismatic art accross the globe followed Paris right into the Abyss. >:( We might have nice looking coins/medals today if it hadn't occured.
LordBest. 8)
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Great answers, keep them coming people ;D
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The campgates!!!! :o
I collect those! ;)
Actually, they are kind of a dull design. I just like them due to the exceptional variety of exergue MM with dots, field marks, the occasional weirdo doors, etc.
And, no one has ever REALLY agreed they are signal towers...So they have a slight aura of mystery. Joe
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I wish i could go back and stop the byzantines from so drasticaly chaging their coinage. Imagine if they would've continued using the late Roman conventions until the 15th century?
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I might whack ATG before he embarked on his career of conquest, save the world from 300 years of the fellow posing as Heracles, and see what the Persians would do with their coinage.
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I can see how the campgates and standards get tiresome since there not special designs and they exist in large numbers, but the Viminacium bull and lion? How is that one of the worst designs?
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I suppose I'm in the minority here, but I wouldn't want any of them to be 'stopped'.
All of them have information about the past to teach us. I do find many of the Constantine era issues dull and monolithic beyond belief, however, even they have their place in history and their admirers.
Besides, If all of those late Roman bronzes disappeared what would those late Roman collectors be collecting? lol
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OK, I'm going to get contentious and put forward a new type of coin that I would stop.
Bending the rules slightly I agree, but I would stop fourrees.
Yeah, yeah, I know that that might have proved difficult given that they may have been produced by counterfeiters, but that is exactly why I would want to stop them. No one knows for sure if they are officially produced, unofficially produced, fakes etc etc.
Given that there is such discussion over why exactly they were produced, and little of it productive in so far as there are no accepted conclusions, then I can't see that these coins do teach us much about the past. (Feel free to correct me on this one ;D )
Also, it's amazing how much, even though silver isn't that expensive, your heart sinks when you realise that the nice denarius you have just bought/found, is actually silver over a copper core. And you don't know if they were produced officially or by some sly little faker in a back cave somewhere :)
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I would have to stop those tiny AE4's. I like them except they cost me to many layers of skin trying to clean the little buggers ! I bet I have had 6 new sets of fingerprints this year !! :o
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I bet I have had 6 new sets of fingerprints this year !! :o
I will update the Interpol records accordingly ;)
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OK, I'm going to get contentious and put forward a new type of coin that I would stop.
Bending the rules slightly I agree, but I would stop fourrees.
Yeah, yeah, I know that that might have proved difficult given that they may have been produced by counterfeiters, but that is exactly why I would want to stop them. No one knows for sure if they are officially produced, unofficially produced, fakes etc etc.
Given that there is such discussion over why exactly they were produced, and little of it productive in so far as there are no accepted conclusions, then I can't see that these coins do teach us much about the past. (Feel free to correct me on this one ;D )
Also, it's amazing how much, even though silver isn't that expensive, your heart sinks when you realise that the nice denarius you have just bought/found, is actually silver over a copper core. And you don't know if they were produced officially or by some sly little faker in a back cave somewhere :)
There's really no question why they were forged. The difference in silver content was profit for the forgers.
The discussion whether they were also sometimes produced officially often comes up again but so far
there have been no convincing arguments that they were. That doesn't mean that it might not still be open to debate once there is some fact to support that theory though. So far I've seen none.
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There's really no question why they were forged. The difference in silver content was profit for the forgers.
The discussion whether they were also sometimes produced officially often comes up again but so far
there have been no convincing arguments that they were. That doesn't mean that it might not still be open to debate once there is some fact to support that theory though. So far I've seen none.
( ;D, told you it was contentious)
No one doubts that the reasons for fourrees were increased profits, just who for is the question. You say that you've seen no facts to support the official production theory. I'd love to see the facts to support the forgery theory then ;)
Anyway, this conversation just goes to show why they should never have been made in the first place :laugh:
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There's really no question why they were forged. The difference in silver content was profit for the forgers.
The discussion whether they were also sometimes produced officially often comes up again but so far
there have been no convincing arguments that they were. That doesn't mean that it might not still be open to debate once there is some fact to support that theory though. So far I've seen none.
( ;D, told you it was contentious)
No one doubts that the reasons for fourrees were increased profits, just who for is the question. You say that you've seen no facts to support the official production theory. I'd love to see the facts to support the forgery theory then ;)
Anyway, this conversation just goes to show why they should never have been made in the first place :laugh:
Facts supporting the theory that coins were forged by private individuals to make a profit
like they have been for centuries?
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I can see three undoubted facts about fourrees. Firstly, they contain significantly less silver, the difference representing the maker's profit. This alone makes it hard to believe they're official, as that would surely undermine confidence in the currency.
Secondly, they're often in extremely good style. So they were made by people who knew exactly what they were doing. I can't help wondering how many people outside the mints had the necessary degree of skill to do it.
Thirdly, no die match with an official coin has ever been found. If they were mint products, I wonder why not?
If the things suddenly ceased to exist, wouldn't that spoil some of the fun in numismatics? Keep doing things like that, and we'll have nothing to do but collecting boring sets of moderns.
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And it's also great fun throwing out contentious ideas as a catalyst to debate and conversation ;D
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I wouldn't want to get rid of the coins I mentioned but I wish there were much less of these,
especially when it comes to the Nicaea ones.
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Thirdly, no die match with an official coin has ever been found. If they were mint products, I wonder why not?
Are you sure about this third point Robert? I seem to recall a Vespasian in CNG ? Or one of the other big Auctions, that had a die link to an official coin, and I also think I recall a post from Curtis Clay regarding a Severan Denari with a die link to an official coin.... But I could be completely wrong on both counts, the old memory aint what it once was ::)
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Die links to official coins are known, but in many cases the forger's die may just be a mechanical reproduction of the official die, deriving from an offical coin.
Crawford p. 561, no. 8, pl. LXV, 1-2, exhibits a solid-silver and a plated denarius apparently from the same die pair, but the die breaks are different, so the forger's dies must actually be "second generation", derived from an official coin struck from those dies.
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Going back to the original question, I believe it was Nero the first one to reduce the percentage of silver in denarii... Well, as a starter of a process that caused high inflation and ended up killing the venerable denarius (the ancient precursor of the Euro, as some point out), I would certainly try to stop him doing that!! (Although, chances are, of course, that I'd end up forming part of the menu of some wild beast in the arena...) :)
Regards,
Ignasi
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Which brings up another question. Did the roman "man in the street" really know that Nero's denarii were of less silver content? After all, they weren't THAT much less silver. I don't mean money changers and the like, and I know weights differed and that professional money handlers had scales and surely knew.
I'm thinking perhaps that at the street level there might have been reasons that moneychangers and the like "neglected" to mention that the new denarii were debased. Or, on the other hand:
"What? You want me to give you how many sestertii for that denarius? Well, my friend, you know the great emperor just reduced the silver content of the denarius to finance that new palace of his and to give away good coin just so those unemployed bums can have a place to live after the fire. So I'm afraid I'll have to give you a combination of dupondii, as, and a sestertius. Yes, you are right, the rich get richer and the common man suffers".
Bruce
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I also think this is a good thread, but a better way to pose the question might have been "What coins don't you like?" Along with the impossibly of stopping coins, there's also the impossibility of stopping fakes of them.
I can see people not liking fourrees or fakes of any kind because of the possibility of getting fooled by one. But despite draconian laws including being deep fried to death in hot oil, authorities throughout the ages have never been able to stop the production of counterfeits. I personally like them, like studying them, like collecting them, like the challenge they pose -- contemporaneous counterfeits meant to fool merchants as well as later forgeries meant to fool us foolish collectors.
Somebody here mentioned wanting to stop Alexander the Great from posing as Herakles for 300 years, bringing up again an old debate. There's no evidence Alexander posed as such for 3 minutes let alone 300 years and plenty of evidence he didn't, most notably the same Herakles image featured on coins before he was born. I like Alexanders myself, both lifetime and posthumous, and wouldn't have wanted to see them stopped, but just as with Owls I can see some people tiring of seeing so many of them.
Interestingly, CNG seems to be trying to buck the tradition of classifying posthumous Alexanders as Alexanders, giving them instead to the ruler responsible for minting them. I believe the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris does this as well (those French!), but as far as I know everybody else except CNG has followed the tradition starting since at least Mueller in 1855 of basing their attribution of posthumous Alexanders to Alexander on the reverse legend that translates into "[Coin] of Alexander."
I can see the logic of both approaches. The traditional approach is safer since we know it's a coin "of Alexander." The French approach in some cases may be more historically accurate, though in many cases I don't believe the dating is secure enough to give a coin to a specific issuer.
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Well, we classify pre-Imperial cistophori by mint, because their subjects are nearly invariable, and the same is true of the Herakles / Zeus enthroned tetradrachms and drachms. There are so many of them, and though it may be more profitable to sell them as ATG, it is more helpful to catalogue them (and study, and learn them) by mints. In principle, it's the same. Unlike many people, I like these all, cistophoroi and Herakles, so I'd only like to keep the Alexander legend at bay. Pat L.
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Why deny history? Instead of "stopping" a coin (an odd sentiment in one of antiquarian bent), why not refer to it as "coins I wouldn't give a plugged nickel for?" Yr obt svt, George Spradling
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Why deny history? Instead of "stopping" a coin (an odd sentiment in one of antiquarian bent), why not refer to it as "coins I wouldn't give a plugged nickel for?" Yr obt svt, George Spradling
Mr Spradling sir, mainly because that question would be no where near as controversial, and I couldn't have a distinct lack of controversy in one of my posts :evil:
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Many coins were produced lacking great craftmanship. Others were produced in such large numbers that they become dull to the collector. But these are purely athsetic viewpoints. I, and probably most other collectors, look at coins as a door to history, to understand it better. I bet there are few coin collectors who buy coins only for their artistic value and pay no attention to the history around it. Coins produced by the western roman empire would be of higher quality then the fragmented tribes that took over the areas in the fifth century. That doesnt mean I'd rather have western roman coins in place of their own. Coins are a gateway to the past first and foremost. Some i think are better looking then others, but i appreciate them all equally.
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Just ran across this thread; sorry for reviving a FIFTEEN-year-old topic!
But I have a very clear opinion about which numismatic development I'd want to stop, which is: The Delian League, in which Athens forced all their allies / subjects to stop their own minting and only use Athenian money. Nice as it is to have a few Athenian owls, think of all the variety we could have had from all these poleis in the years 450 to 400 BC, when Greek classical art was at its highest... :(
Rupert
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The only thing I would stop is - people from using flans (blanks) that were way smaller than the die, thus depriving us of some or all of the design.....
SC
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I would be happy to provide some 5th Century AE4s with bust and walking Vic that are too small for legends. They really peg my frustration meter.
Best,
Larry
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Oh, I would stop this Silbannacus coin exactly because its uniqueness ruins my series of rulers in Rome: https://www.forumancientcoins.com/numiswiki/view.asp?key=ERIC%20-%20SILBANNACUS (https://www.forumancientcoins.com/numiswiki/view.asp?key=ERIC%20-%20SILBANNACUS).
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I read this a couple days ago and had to come back. I, like many, have coins I find are boring. An example is VOT reverses. But, how about this (actually two) as a broad example. The Islamic prohibition on living things in art, so we get lots of text. To a lesser degree was the advent of Christianity that limited designs (lots of crosses). I appreciate all coins, but my only interest in Islamic for the most part is specific mints, otherwise, I find them boring. I also can't read them, so I am sure the text can be very interesting.
Virgil