"What a pity" OTD

[mauseus]

Hi,

I have on my desk here a bag of coins that are too poor or damaged to make it into my collection trays, yet are too nice in their own way to part with. For example the bag contains a Kaulonia silver stater that cost just £1 (and that might make it into this thread if I can get a good enough photo of it).

There is also this coin; a dupondius of Domitian (or given it's state of preservation an as??).

Obverse I think is IMP CAES DOMIT AVG GERM PM TRP VIII CENS PER PP with a reverse of COS XIIII LVD SAEC FEC SC, the victimarius slaying a held bull with pipers behind and an altar in front visible (RIC 382; BMC p.395, *; Cohen 89 (Paris) I believe).

An interesting reverse on a coin rescued from a junk box containing pre decimal pennies and assorted foreign coins at an antiques fair for 15 pence five years ago!

Regards,

Mauseus

[curtislclay]

Looks like the same dies as the Paris spec., pl. CXIII, 465.

[Rupert]

How can a coin break like this? Was it deliberately halved because somebody needed an as for the cervisia vending machine, or was it somebody doing his own private damnatio Memoriae here?

Rupert

[Robert_Brenchley]

Ibn the absence of evidence to the contrary, I'd assume an accidental break. Coins which have been deliberately cut have usually been done with a chisel or something similar, leaving a straight cut. I'm quite convinced this one was accidental.

[Ghengis_Jon]

Hey!  I thought I was the only one to use the tacky pink background for coin shots.  My lawyers will be calling you.....

[slokind]

Although interior decorating students are taught first off the mantra, "Pink and Green should never be seen", some tints of red do look good with some off-shades of green, at least in photographs (we aren't doing houses or offices).  And once I deliberately put pale cyan (of all icky hues) behind an As, to show the hole through it emphatically.
But more ad rem: what if (as seems very likely on Robert's coin) the coins that broke incorporated major impurities that caused structural weakness, so that stepping on them or even dropping them could make them break?
Pat L.

[Robert_Brenchley]

I have a Claudius II with a die crack running almost parallel to the faces, which gives it precisely such a weakness. I've always suspected such a problem to be the cause of the break in my coin.