me new and favorite coin..

[aballein]

Roman Empire

Bronze

Theodosius I

379-395 AD

This was a gift from a fellow collector on the Collectors Universe Forum. Its not the nicest coin but considering that its over 1600 years old i think it has held up fairly well and i LOVE it. I cant get a good shot of the reverse..it needs to soak in oil i think.

[coop]

I didn't know Abe was on coin then?? The motto has larger letters..

[eagames]

Those Roman coins are fun.

After you soak it try reading the lettering, see what is before or after the name and the mintmark.

A few things that make it easier is that they often have letters in front of the name or after the name.

Please add any corrections or additional stuff if you know it but here's what I see on many of them:

Often before the name they say:
DN = Dominus Noster = our lord?
IMP = Imperator = our leader of the army?
DIV = Divus = divine?

Often after the name they say:
PFAG = Pius Felix Augustus = happy holy emperor?
AG = Augustas = emperor?
NNOBC = Noster Noble Caesar = our noble caesar?
Numbers if there were several leaders of same name

These coins also have mintmarks that tell you the country and mint where it was made. The mintmarks are often several letters on the lower reverse. They had many mints and made the same coins but every die is slightly different. You can look up the roman mints on the web.

These coins are often very common! You can buy them often for $1-$3 They find them all over and small coppers/bronze were often one days pay for soldiers so they find them everyplace and sometimes in hoards (of many of the same coin) like army payroll stashes or anyones stash with a mix of coins. Some of them were coated with silver (silver wash?) but it's often not noticeable on ones they dig up. They also find them in graves because it was tradition to put a coin in dead peoples mouths for luck, they didn't want to be burried without any cash.

I don't know of any DDOs or RPMs

[aballein]

i know nothing about this coin really, but i will update yall when/if i can get it cleaned up a bit. Its hard to believe that a coin this old could be worth as little as $1.00...for that price i want 100 of them!!!

[eagames]

Do an ebay search in all categories for:
(roman, ancient) (coin, coins)

You'll be surprised, like I said $1-$3 will get lots of them and they're fun to identify. Nice ones would cost more but I agree with you for a few bucks they're fun. I once was at a shop and they had a dish (maybe 20 in the dish) that said "you pick em $3" so I said what do you want if I get all of them and he said $1 so I got the batch for $20 and had a lot of fun. I also gave a few to new collectors and they loved them.

Here's an example, 20 for $35...

http://cgi.ebay.com/ANCIENT-ROMAN-COINS-20-ONLY-34-99-SILVER-GOLD-FOUND_W0QQitemZ200111933418QQihZ010QQcategoryZ525QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

[garylcsr]

Ed i am not so sure i would trust your seller on ebay. his feedback reminds me of most of the reasons i use ebay very seldom. but he sure is proud of his very few green dots.lol even the green dots with a bad response made him happy.
personally i would avoid the guy like the plague but that's just me
Gary

[eagames]

Yea that's just an example of how cheap they are.

I avoid ebayers telling me you will find gold!

There's tons of cheap old roman coins on there.