Monday, January 27, 2020

One VNCIA sized Aes Grave Fragment

I recently purchased a piece of a broken Aes Grave coin. The piece is 27.31 grams. A Roman As is 327.45 grams. One twelfth of an As is 27.29 grams. For my collection, I call it a VNCIA. The first two pics are from the seller (Artemide Aste) and the next pics are mine.



 


Aes Premonetale. A fragment of unidentified Aes Grave As, after 280 BC. AE.
27.39 grams (I measured 27.32 grams +/- .002 due to scale drift)
40.00 mm
RR. A very interesting and intriguing example. VF.
Possibly cut to provide small change, just like the cast bronze ingots were usually cut for payments of smaller amounts in the 3rd century. The weight of this fragment is close to one uncia = 1/12th of an As (27.29 gr).
3” (7.62 cm) circle drawer
2.74” (6.96 cm) camera cap cover
Small lines = 0.5” (1.27 cm)
Cut Aes dimensions - 40.64 X 18.79 X 10.23 mm
Inner radius 5.3 mm smaller than outer
Estimate outer Dia = 64 mm
Estimate inner Dia = 54 mm
I estimate the diameter of the coin to be 66 mm (2.6 ") and the inner ring to be about 10 mm smaller. I found 14 examples of Cr 35/1 in Grueber, BMCRR. The diameter of 13 listed coins was 2.51".
I looked in Vecchi, ICC and found several Asses that have an inner rim and a straight line near the edge of the rim: TV-1, TV-6, TV-16, TV-36, TV-37, TV-51a (cR 35/1), TV-57. These are the most likely to my cut coin.