Licinius I, discovery new variant on RIC 825

 It's by browsing a detection forum: http://www.detecteur.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=124494.And reading the post on a Licinius I coin, I see a picture put by a member, illustrating the type of coin found by the person wanting identification. Surprise! I see immediately a detail gone unnoticed so far: it is not the usual scepter held by the emperor, but a spear!

 After discovering this, the first question I ask myself is this: how many officinas struck this coin? Which ones? How many different dies associated? The answer is interesting and shows that this variant is not scarce, since I have already listed two officinas, the first: PTR and the second: STR. In addition, two different obverse dies and two different reverse dies. Two different legend break: for the first officina: IOVI CONSERV - ATORI AVG, for the second officina: IOVI CONSERVA - TORI AVG. I also note that the reverse with the first officina shows an eagle with the right wing deployed and the second officina shows an eagle with the right wing folded. I must say that these are two associations of obverse / reverse and that while waiting to see more copies with the "spear" variant, we can suppose that other coins could still have different combinations of obverse and reverse. I noted a legend without a break, used by the two officinas and it is possible that this legend is also associated with a variant with spear. Similarly for breaks: IOVI – CONSERVATORI AVG and IOVI – CONSERVATORI – AVG or others, can also appear with this variant.

 There does not seem to have been any sharing of obverse dies between the two officinas, so for now, nothing indicates it. Because the two obverse dies are different. On the other hand, I note that it is probable that the same engraver for the second officina, engraved a second die of similar reverse in the style and even the legend break: IOVI CONSERVA - TORI AVG, the coin posted on the forum, by the member REP14 shows an obverse with the variant "spear" and the reverse has a very particular style, it is especially the style of the wings of the eagle which differs from other coins. Off I find these points on this coin: https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=532033. But on the link, we see an obverse where the emperor holds a scepter! Even the style of the obverse, seems not to be the same.

  The variant with scepter shows us little balls at the top of the scepter. The scepter is also short. On this copy: https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=3765180, the scepter is long and does not seem to have balls at the end. One can ask if a spear with the tip down would be the representation.

 It will take more copies to analyze and also make a serious die link study, before drawing definitive conclusions. Finally, a small point that I noted: on the mint of Arles (Arelates), the lightning held by Jupiter is inclined to the left, on the mint of Trier, it always seems inclined to the right. Here is the interest of a style study, andi do that every time I add a work on emperor on this website! With these small details unique to some mint, we can recognize a mint even without being able to read the mark!