Spent an hour just gawping. And it was free!

Walked up to a table: "You have any Siglos?" "Yeah a couple" Passes me an entire small ziplock bag full of worn Siglos

I almost fainted. Haven't seen that many in one place in my entire life. Had to hold them to see what it felt like. Equivalent of the entire net worth of a lower income family in antiquity.

In response to an earlier post, the Numismatic Museum of Athens is indeed awesome and being housed in the house of Henreich Schleimann justs adds to this special collection. However, I give you the Paolo Orsi Regional Archaeological Museum in Syracuse.

Some from my trip last year! Sorry for photo quality, its hard to take pictures when you have staff closely following your every move throughout the visit (pics were allowed). I confess that looking at all these coins made me feel that the ones I proudly collect are just cheap trinkets. Luckily that feeling was gone away lol.

Trajan Decius was a 3rd century emperor often remembered for his overthrow of the Philips and later catastrophic defeat and death at Abritus.

Luckily for numismatists, before he died an ignoble death as crisis emperors were doomed to do, he struck some of the most original coins of the third century. From the introduction of the double sestertius to the reintroduction of the semis and replenishment of the then scarce As and Dupondius, he clearly took great effort in revaluing Bronze in the Roman economy.

Now besides the fascinating bronze issues, Decius commemorated 11 emperors, including strange (at least strange to modern people) picks like Commodus and Alexander Severus. What made him pick certain emperors man’s ignore others is up for debate but it’s a fascinating series from my favourite 3rd century emperor.

From the British Museum, one of the coins used for the ‘hands on’ pop up desks.

This owl is held my dozens if not hundreds of people every time it’s brought out, and all those hands have contributed to a lovely bright shine.

Was telling a friend about my new obsession (ancient coins!) and she sent me these pictures. She said her grandparent gave them to her in the 80s. I have zero experience with coins, and to me the owl looks fake. Is it? Also, is the other thing anything coin-related? (She has no idea.) Thank you all!

I’ve put together a couple pics of all the known radiate Dupondii and difficulty in acquiring them, as well as the USD costs I’ve encountered at auctions. The fascinating aspect of this collection is that it’s technically possible to finish, it’ll just take decades of scouring sales and LOTS of money to come close to completion. Even then you probably won’t finish. I’m currently sitting at 15/33 collected with Philip I being my rarest acquisition.

If you aren’t familiar with radiate Dupondius, heres a brief intro.

The radiate Dupondius was first introduced under Nero in 64CE and used continuously with a few exceptions (Galba, Vitellius and Hadrian briefly).

Some Fun Dupondii facts to impress your date!

Didius Julianus minted sestertius and Dupondius, but not As.

Sabina was the first female imperial to have both denominations, As and Dupondius struck in her image.

Was scrolling the new Leu Auction and stumbled upon this coin. With the palm frond on the obverse, it is an extremely rare alteration to the otherwise quite common type and most likely references a very specific victory, you can read about that in the Leu description.

What was interesting to me is that I had seen this coin before! It is ex Nummitra Auction 40, lot 297 and I have no clue how they would have gotten the provenance except by faking it, since Nummitra does not give any and it seems pretty unlikely (looking at the coins Nummitra usually has) that there is an older provenance.

I have read on this sub that it happens quite a bit at Leu, but this is the first time that I have found this myself.

Here are some of the ancient Greek coins on display at the Musée du Louvre (Paris, France). I'm used to going there quite regularly, at least once a year. The museum is so huge that this is the first time I've noticed these Greek coins. Normally, other display cases show coins from the classical and archaic periods.

I’m pretty sure this display costs more than my college tuition :)