Licinius Ostia-Arles transfer - what's the tell ?

[Heliodromus]

I own one of the coins in the link, and I'm nearly certain there's at least two obverse dies being used in that group.

There's certainly a reasonable number of dies used for the mint transfer types. For the providentiae type I've noted 6 reverse dies across 16 specimens for Constantine, as well as 4 bust types (G5L, G8L, K3L, B4). I didn't bother to check number of obverse dies.

I attach images of the rim of the last coin Ben posted above, which I hope the coin's owner doesn't mind me posting (he posted them in the Facebook group from which he originally sought advice). I'd be curious what people say about them.

There's nothing especially notable to me about the rims other than one side being very thin. The weight of that specimen at 2.16g is also very light (these were struck at the ~3.3g 1/96 lb standard, interestingly not the 1/72lb of the earliest Arles coins), although I've seen a number of other light presumably genuine specimens for Constantine too.

What would condemn this coin along with the rest of them is all of the shared "defects" as well as the filled-in blobbiness of the mintmark etc.

Per the provenance of the Copenhagen specimen, these coins seem to be at least a couple of hundred years old, so the patina/aging on them may well be genuine. Perhaps if they were stripped there would be better evidence of casting (or not).

Is there an VTILITAS reverse for Licinius listed? If not, I think this could be inferential evidence that the Licinius PROVIDENTIAE folles posted above are either inauthentic or unofficial. I realize the VTILITAS reverse for Constantine is slightly rarer (I think) than the PROVIDENTIAE reverse, but surely a Licinius VTILITAS would have turned up by now if the Providentiae issue with his obverse was official.

No, not listed, nor have I seen one. For Licinius there is only this providentiae die pair (note that RIC erroneously lists officina T for the Copenhagen specimen of Licinius RIC 32, but the coin - picture above - is in fact from this same officina S "die"). Maybe although not being intended for Licinius, there was a mule struck for him which was then copied.

I also wonder what the rationale would have been for striking a Licinius version of these coins. They were clearly struck in very limited numbers and for an event very local to Arles (i.e. deep within Constantine's territory). I doubt they were intended to circulate much further than Arles itself.

I agree - it's really a local/personal type, obviously reflecting a decision made by Constantine alone. The PROVIDENTIAE AVGG (plural) legend is notable, but seems to be more of a trope copied mindlessly from the earlier tetrarchic argenteus type. We also see PROVIDENTIAE AVGG NN used by Licinius for his first Heraclea campgates, struck only for himself, and for Constantine's entire 6-year, sole rule, campgate series! Only right at the end of the series does one mint (Arles as it happens) "correct" this to AVG.

Ben

[SC]

I wrote a very short article in Koinon II about how the system, used especially by ancient Egyptian forgers, whereby impressions of genuine-issue coins are taken in clay, which is then baked to form terra cotta and formed into stacks to cast counterfeits can easily result in "mules", double obverse or double reverse coins.  The baked molds are simply stacked in the wrong order and voila.

It is possible that this new Licinius is one of those, but it still relies on an extremely rare coin type being used by the forger and so goes against the occam's razor principle.

SC