PTR mint mark... Trier?

[ae22]

Greetings everyone,

My name is Scott. I'm relatively new to collecting ancient coins (2.5 yrs.).

After one year I thought I had a pretty good handle on things, but now I realize that I really don't  know a great deal, especially what is committed to memory. I can research pretty good, but the field of ancient coins is so vast it's hard for me to remember everything I read. Perhaps it's my age.

Anyway, the first ancient coin I acquired was a Constantinopolis commemorative. Once I finally identified it I began collecting those types and now have quite a few. I also have a number of other LRB's and hope to post some of them for your comments.

For this one I wasn't sure whether to post it here, or in 'unidentified', so if it needs to be moved please, by all means.

I have spoken about it with Lech from NOT IN RIC and his opinion was that it is a possible ancient imitation.

My original theory was that it was made with the early mint mark of PTR, that was used at Trier just before the Constantinopolis was issued.

But as you can see the it's not really of the Trier style.

If you have an opinion of it I would love to hear it.

Thanks 

[Victor]

Hello Scott and welcome. I would agree with Lech that it looks like an unofficial issue. At first glance, the style does not look quite right, and the obvious issue with the mintmark and the star in the field. Even though I would say it is unofficial, it is a very neat example.

I used to collect these Constantinople coins and made a page about them-
http://www.constantinethegreatcoins.com/comm/

[ae22]

Thanks for the second opinion on this one Victor. I think it is well made for an unofficial coin, but it remains unofficial.

If only one could  know who made it!

I have seen your site on Constantinopolis coins and used it many times as I was putting together my collection of these types. It is one of the best for these coins IMO.

I have examples from from every mint city and very nearly one from every officinae (not all the marks though). I only have a few tough officina left to find, but I thought I would make a post about that in the near future. Maybe it would be interesting?

[Victor]

Maybe it would be interesting?

All things LRB are interesting! 

[Genio popvli romani]

Hello Scott and welcome.
I do agree with Victor and Lech for an imitation (combining Arles or Aquileia's field star and  an unused m.m. for this trier issue). I've just checked in the nummus-bible-database and have found this :

http://www.nummus-bible-database.com/monnaie-6483.htm

In my opinion, it has been struck with the same reverse die.

[ae22]

Thanks for your comments. I meant to get back sooner but work has been really busy....

Wow, Genio that is a die match. Thanks for posting that!

How common is it to find a die match on LRB unofficial coins, or on official ones for that matter. I haven't seen many at all.

Although I did see a cool one on Victors site recently, a double die match.

[Victor]

How common is it to find a die match on LRB unofficial coins, or on official ones for that matter.

The rarer a coin, the more likely another example of the same type is a die match, since less coins were struck with the die.

Common coins have die matches also, but it is much harder to look through hundreds and even thousands of examples of fairly similar coins and verify a die match- plus it is hard to even have enough examples of a common series to find a die match.

[ae22]

That makes sense, and puts it in a nutshell.

Thanks.

[Victor]

Here is a link to my VLPP die-matches page. Through the years that I collected this series, I looked at many hundreds of these coins and only found a few.

http://www.constantinethegreatcoins.com/diematch/