My entry would be:
Anonymous, Æ triens, (14.60g) After 211 BC Laureate head of Minerva right, four pellets above. / Prow right, ROMA above, four pellets below. C56/4. VF, brown patina, heavy example. Ex-Goodman collection with his ticket.
Dear
EdessaThat's a very interesting coin. Because if you look at the coin and compare it with your description of the coin, the two are quite different.
Crawford 56/4 has
ROMA above the prow, this coin is clearly blank above and has
ROMA below. The
weight is very heavy indicating it is an early
Triens and not for example one of the later small change issues that come in a lot of varieties. I looked closely to see if there is a symbol above the prow, but there is not. I then checked the Goodman
catalogue (
CNG43-47 which I have bound up in one hardcover volume) and it is not listed, but as about 1/4 of the coins were sold outside the main
CNG sales that is not entirely surprising. Now look at the
reverse. It has a prominent triangular shaped deck-house. Compare
Crawford, plates 11 and 12. Do any coins have such a triangular deck-house? No they don't. Such deckhouses first appear about 195BC, from
Crawford issue 133 and later, when the entire coinage underwent a stylistic change. But this coin is too heavy for 195BC!
Roman Aes were by that time being struck on a
standard about Uncial, which means you would expect a
Triens to weigh 9 grams of less. So this coin is a conundrum. I then checked the Kestner-Hannover
catalogue; no such coin designs and your coin is also at the very highest
weight threshold: Frank
Berger lists 34 Trientes, all of
standard designs with
ROMA above the prow, ranging from 5 to 15 grams in
weight. I wondered whether it might be a
Crawford 41
Triens, but all those are on a wider
flan, with
ROMA above and flat deckhouses. Then I realised I have one of the same
type myself, illustrated below, lighter in
weight, and of a different engraving (photo source:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ahala_rome/4105120447 ). But the difference in the feel of the coin tells me they are not from the same decade. Note the thick lines on your prow, the flat profile and dignified expression on
Minerva. These are different issues from a different period. The next point on the trail was the "omitted symbol" possibility. Sometimes issues with
symbols are known with the symbol missing in error, but can be tracked from other elements of the design. Finally I leafed through Goodman,
Hannover and
Crawford to see if I could
pick a match in
style, and with
ROMA below the prow and a missing symbol. The closest I could come up with was issues from
Crawford 200-219 ie about 150BC, which have the distinctive thick and short prow-stem. Looking back to your coin I see a shadow of a vertical line between the deck house and the prow-stem, and of a horizontal line at the 1pm position on the
reverse. This is suggestive of the Mast and Sail series
Crawford 213. Except that the mast and sail series has no known
Triens.... so I checked
Russo, "Unpublished
Roman Republican bronze coins" in
Essays Hersh. No mast and sail
Triens,
nor any anonymous
Triens of this
type. So I've almost reached a dead end, and meanwhile you can be sure you have an enigmatic variety ... but of what? Because I can't think of an As-headed bronze series this should belong. As I don't like being defeated in such quests I will forward the pic. to Richard Shaefer (
aka as "Goodman") to seek
his view, no doubt he will have an immediate answer, as he has a photographic recollection of coins he has seen before and I am sure any from
his collection will ring a
bell.
A couple of questions:
- What EXACTLY does the Goodman tag say (assuming your description is a paraphrase of the general Cr56 description, but I'd expect the Goodman tag would not have misdescribed the coin).
- It's naughty of me to ask I know, but I am puzzled how a coin could be your "favourite" and yet you did not seem to have looked at the coin to properly determine it
type. Was it a favourite because it looks and feels nice and you aren't too bothered about
catalogue matches? Or did you recognise the mis-match and just not have an answer.
