VICTORIA AVGGG

Bust of Aelia Verina to the right, draped, wearing a diadem of pearls, a necklace of pearls and long earrings. Above, the hand of God crowning her.

An angel standing left, holding a long latin cross decorated with jewels. Behind her on the right, a star.

Photo of a coin sold the 02/04/2008 by Numismatica Ars Classica, Auction 46, lot 749, link to the sale: https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=454048, link to their website: http://www.arsclassicacoins.com/. It is for the moment, the only coin that I saw, with the letters V having a shape of V. The variants below list the forms of V in  or other forms explained below.

For the classification of the legends and the form of the letters, click here: https://www.all-your-coins.com/en/emperors/romaines-imperiales/aelia-verina.

The style of the coin is quite unusual if we take into account all the mintage. The portrait is wide and  could be latish, so in the second striking period.This legend with V, is attributed by the RIC to the first striking period, therefore from 462 to 466. In my opinion, according to my research, forms V or Y are, most of the time, caused by bad engraving. A tool with a rather large and flat end probably used to write the letters. The V with a point at their base, so of form Y, are therefore classified in the V. Only the letters showing a base on the right side of the V are considered as . See the table above. One can therefore ask the question, did the RIC correctly analyzed the forms of the letters? It took me a close examination and zoom or magnifier too, to conclude that there are 2 distinct forms: The V and the  so that are the examples (2) and (3) of the table at the beginning of the page. Those two  have a horizontal line and a "right leg" going down lower. The other forms, as I pointed out, are V inscribed differently.

The weights and diameters are an average of known copies, all very close to these figures.

On the reverse I noted ''Angel'' in the description. We can also say that this is Victoria but the image of the victory at that time had indeed become that of an angel symbolizing the Christian victory. I note that this character is probably also a representation of the Empress in the guise of the angel. Indeed, the character often wears the same double pearl diadem and the clothes are decorated like those of Aelia Verina. I have noticed many times that on the coinage of various Empresses the character on the reverse is depicted as the Empress.