A Very Rare Emission from London

Just came across an example of a very rare London emission. The *T/*F//PLN issue of around mid 310 AD is recorded in RIC referring mostly to examples known from the Boursies hoard. I cannot ever recall seeing one offered for sale or any reported in recent hoards. Looking through CHRB Volume 12 (see June below) at the weekend, I noticed that one was recorded in the Prestwood B hoard and is illustrated. A Constantine with the reverse COMITI AAVVGG. The whole hoard of over 700 coins was acquired by the Buckinghamshire County Museum but there is no mention of it on the Museum website. If anyone knows of any other examples of this mintmark please let me know.

The Arrangement of the London Mint BEATA Issues in RIC VII Part II

To add to the previous post about the BEATA issues, for completeness, I think I should repeat an earlier discussion post by Curtis Clay about RIC VII 215-6:

• "RIC 215-6 are the last listings for the BEATA TRA-NQVILLITAS type of RIC 199-216, not a new variant with BEAT only. So the introduction, p. 96, names two versions of this type only, BEATA TRANQVILLITAS and BEAT TRANQLITAS, with no mention of the alleged BEAT TRANQVILLITAS version of RIC 215-6. The same in Voetter's Gerin cat., pp. 156-8; no BEAT TRANQVILLITAS, though RIC 216 with this alleged legend is stated to be very common (c3)! According to RIC, BEATA TRANQVILLITAS does not occur for Constantine II in this issue, but Voetter no. 5 indeed lists it for him. Voetter 5 is clearly the same as RIC 216, with BEATA not BEAT"

To support this the Hunter catalogue records two examples of RIC 216 both “but reverse BEATA”. Page 236, #2 and #3. Therefore, simply a typo, a missing A in RIC! Therefore, the reverse legends of both RIC 215 and 216 should read BEATA TRANQVILLITAS.

The Arrangement of the London Mint BEATA Issues in RIC VII Part I

I have posted the following information on an online discussion group some time ago but I have recently revisited it and thought it worthwhile posting here. A while ago I was studying the BEATA issues and came across an apparent discrepancy in RIC. The catalogue of RIC VII (pages 110-115) gives the following sequence of the BEATA/BEAT issues :

• P/A//PLON (BEATA) then PLON (BEATA) then F/B//PLON (BEAT) and finally PLON (BEAT).

But the text (page 96) gives the following order:

• PLON (BEATA) then P/A//PLON (BEATA) then F/B//PLON (BEAT) and finally PLON (BEAT).

The reference referred to in the notes of the text, Bruun's "The Disappearance of Sol from the Coins of Constantine" supports the order of the issues given in the text. This is a significant error in RIC and I can’t recall coming across anyone noting this error before. I think that RIC 199-219 should really be placed between RIC 237 and RIC 238 assuming that the text is correct rather than the catalogue. If this reordering is correct, it would make more sense as RIC 217-219 could then be explained by the crossover from the longer to the shorter reverse legends.