Identify Your Own Late Roman Bronze Coin

Includes: One late Roman bronze coin (c. 4th or 5th century CE), magnifying lens, blank attribution card, and coin identification guide with Certificate of Authenticity.

Identify your own Roman coin with the help of this guide by History Hoard! It includes one Roman bronze coin minted under a random ruler between the reign of Emperor Diocletian and the fall of the Western Roman Empire. This period marks the "late" phase of Roman bronzes, a stylistic shift initiated by Diocletian's monetary reforms.

A quick disclaimer: identifying Roman coins can be challenging, and a short guide like this may not be enough to definitively attribute a coin to a certain emperor. However, we have also included a list of free online resources that professionals use to identify coins, which can be used for further research as needed.

The four page guide illustrates the most commonly seen portrait of each emperor, with examples of how their names would be spelled on their coins. A list of designs often seen on the reverse sides of bronze coins is also included.

The text on the coin (called the legend) can be difficult to read, and you can use the magnifier in this set to assist you. We've also divided our coins into three difficulty levels—easy, with about 75% of the legend visible, average, with about 50% of the legend visible, and hard, with about 25% of the legend visible. The legend is the easiest way to identify a coin, as portraits can look very similar between emperors.