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| This interesting type with veiled head of Concordia has a reverse scene showing the capture of Macedonian king Perseus and his two sons in 168BC by Lucius Aemilius Paulus. The moneyer (in 62 BC) was a brother of Lepidus who later was triumvir, consul and a supporter of Brutus but was allowed to live by Augustus. His son married Augustus' granddaughter, Julia the Younger. You would think all this would qualify a coin to be among my favorites but, no, the reason is stranger than that. This coin has the best example of a weight adjustment scoop of the several in my collection. It is not the coin here that I like, it is the missing metal that most people would say ruins the reverse. Republican denarii of the first century BC were, in theory, struck 72 to the Roman pound of silver. It was not considered important that the coins each weighed 1/72 of a pound but that they averaged out so 72 coins would weigh a pound. This was accomplished by casting 72 blanks so that they weighed slightly more than a pound and then removing metal from random coins (not necessarily the heaviest ones) until the batch weighed a pound. The reduction was done with a scoop shaped chisel that was tapped across the surface of the blank (before the coin was struck). This mark is unusual in that it shows ten stutter marks as the gouge was passed over its surface. Two or three is more usual. Some reduced flan gouges were erased when the coin was struck. I'm glad this one was not. When selecting my favorite coins, I employed many different standards and reasons. Here is one of the more unusual. |
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