Amiens:

Trier:

Trier was the last mint I found and the one that triggered the creation of this page but my celebration had a false start. The coin on the left is listed in RIC as #350 page 167 and should weigh 4.25g. This one is 4.12g which is within the range of acceptability. It arrived in the mail on the day this is being written. A few months ago I got the one on the right which matches the legends and types but weighs only 2.0g. This is light even for a reduced coin of the next issue (RIC 358) which should not have the A behind the bust. This smaller coin is a barbarous copy so my hopes of filling the 'Mint' set went unfilled that day. I would have preferred an earlier, full weight FH2 to fill this slot but for now this middle period but official FH3 (ranked by RIC as common) will fill this slot giving me a coin from all 15 mints to show on this page.

UPDATE: Two years after posting this page, I acquired this Trier mint (TRP) coin of Constantius Gallus. While that alone made the coin interesting, this specimen is made more appealing by its huge 25mm, 5.85g flan. While weights of late Roman coins can be quite variable, this one makes me ask questions that can not be answered. Is there an explanation for the coin being so heavy, broad and thin? Certainly nothing can be proven but the flan is what I would expect if it were prepared by hammering flat another coin of slightly greater weight standard. The previous issue from this mint was for Magnentius and many were of about this weight. Was this flan recycled from politically incorrect stock at the mint? It is a "fun" theory but nothing can be proven. If nothing else, the coin is an unusual example with full border of dots on both sides.

Lyons:

Arles - Constantia:

Rome:

It may seem odd that the coins of the capital city are not the most common of the series. Perhaps more of the resources at that mint were devoted to the production of gold and medallions. The base metal coinage was centered in the provinces. Still, there are enough reasonably common Rome mint Falling Horseman that it should not be too hard to find an example. During this period, Rome used a mixed system of six officinae with the shops one, three and four (Primus, Tertius and Quartus) indicated by ordinal initials. The second, fifth and sixth shops (B, E and S) switched to Greek numerals to avoid confusion caused by the fact that the first letter of Quintus had already been used in the series as four and B is clearly two while S might be confused between Secundus and Sextus. Our early FH2 coin (left) has the mintmark RF.E indicating shop 5 (I do not understand the use of the F). R is used for the city initial but there is often some device or letter between the initial and the workshop number. The second and fourth coins have a Q (4th shop) while the Constantius Gallus (3rd from left) is shop S. Perhaps indicating some sense of humor at the mint the S was assigned to shop six. S could be the ordinal Sextus but our coin shows a squiggle shaped letter more likely intended to be the Greek numeral for 6 which modern type faces lack as part of the normal set. We need to remember that these markings were intended for mint accountability and not to make life easy for 21st century coin collectors.

Aquileia:

Siscia:

Sirmium:

Thessalonica:

Of the fifteen mints, Thessalonica offers the greatest variety of Falling Horseman types. This mint, at one time or another, produced all four of the FH types. Distinctive among the early issues are the FH1 coins (top row for Constans and Constantius II) that use a right facing obverse portrait showing the emperor holding a globe. This is similar to the common left facing portraits used on the middle denomination at other mints. My coins at the left of the two bottom rows show the FH2 'sitting' style with different field letters separating them by weight standards or series. My small coins are FH3 'reaching'. Unfortunately, I do not have one of the later FH4 coins for my image. Early period coins of Thessalonica used a mintmark with Greek numeral (A through E) following TS to indicate the city. Stars and dots were used to distinguish a sequence various series. Distinctive to this mint alone is the reduced size series shown in my image by the pile of one obverse and five reverse images. This series marked the five workshops (officinae) with a Greek numeral in the reverse field. Other mints, and this mint at other times, used this position for letters indicating the weight standard of the coins. This gets a bit confusing since these same letters (most commonly gamma) were common field letters for larger series. Notice that these coins use the mintmark SMTS (Sacra Moneta Thessalonica) in exergue without a following workshop letter. Compare these to the even later coin of Julian II (bottom right) which uses SMTSE (E being the shop letter) and M to mark the series in the reverse field. Also note that this mint used quite a variety of horsemen hair styles and caps. It was unusual for a mint of that day to change so many details so frequently. A complete set of Thessalonica horsemen considering every possible variation will be a lot of coins.

Heraclea:

Heraclea follows the pattern of the other mints perhaps a little more strictly by issuing Falling Horsemen only for Constantius II in the early period and Galley types for Constans. Many mints favored these assignments but occasionally crossed back and forth with varying degrees of frequency. A point to be made here is that it is necessary to be careful to distinguish coins of Heraclea from coins of Nicomedia since the angled middle of the N and straight cross of the H can be less than obvious on some coins. I am less than confident in making this call on many coins. Heraclea issued a few FH4 coins (upper right) in the early period but no FH1 or FH2. Most coins from this mint will be FH3 'reaching'. Mintmarks used SM (Sacra Moneta) followed by the H initial and a Greek numeral (A-E) for the five shop system. One has to wonder is 'Sacred' money carried a greater penalty for counterfeiting than 'Regular'?

Constantinople:

Nicomedia:

Cyzicus:

Cyzicus is another mint with rare coins before the gamma series. It is yet another mint suffering from a lack of artists who could draw a proper horseman. Our examples, however, include two extraordinary coins. The Constantius Gallus at the lower left still bears much of its original silver plating. All of these coins were issued with this silver wash but few retain even a trace. This example must have been fortunate in terms of where it spent the last 1700 years to be able to have so much silver. At the bottom right is another exceptionally well struck coin from the usually dumpy M series. Note that it also has the open top A's mentioned above in our paragraph on Siscia. The reverse of this coin might be considered a gem were it not for the body of the horseman consisting of three bent lines. Cyzicus also used the SM plus city initial (K) plus Greek numeral (six shops) mintmark.

Antioch:

Alexandria:

That brings us to the end of our survey of fifteen mints that made coins of this the most common Roman coin type. Were they rare, the action scene reverse would make them popular and expensive but as it is they get little respect from most dealers and collectors. Finding all 15 mints has been a chore since many dealers ignore such common coins.

Barbarous:

In addition to coins of the fifteen official mints we find coins of the Falling Horseman design made outside normal channels. Some, like one shown above in our discussion of the Trier mint, are reasonable copies of official coins. Others, like the two shown here, are quite obviously barbarous. Coins of both classes (and everything in between) might be the work of counterfeiters intending to profit from their enterprise but others are most likely local products in regions that were short on coin supply but where official coins had made the people used to a coin economy creating a demand for something, anything, to serve in commerce. These are more like tokens than fakes and were important in the daily economy of their regions. My observation has been that there are more unofficial coins bearing Trier markings than any others suggesting that far off Germany was not well supplied with the real thing. The two coins shown here are the wild end of the unofficial range. Most legends degrade to marks but the style of portrait and the reverse scene are only a bit worse than the low end official coins. Barbarous coins do come much worse. I suspect they were made to circulate as coins somewhere beyond the limits of the Roman Empire where they were the only available form of coined money. Barbarous coins are not at all scarce but appeal only to a relatively small group of specialists. There is no way to tell if they date to the same years as 'real' horsemen or if they provided coinage long after the Romans had left the area. There is much room for study in this field of numismatics.