257, Lot: 476. Estimate $75. Sold for $50. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

Constantine II. As Caesar, AD 316-337. Æ Follis (19mm, 2.96 g, 7h). Londinium (London) mint. Struck AD 324-325. Laureate, draped, and cuirassed bust right / Camp gate, with two turrets, no doors, and six stone layers; pellet above and in doorway; PLON. RIC VII 296 var. (no pellets). EF, brown patina, some roughness.

The ‘dot/PLON’ mintmark was discovered and presented in the Pierre Bastien sale in October 1982 (Münzen und Medaillen 61). Lot 620, a follis of Crispus, features a pellet above the doorway and this usage of an additional mark is seen as a separate emission. A similar example sold in CNG electronic auction 204, lot 377.3.

The output of the mints at Londinium, Lugdunum, and Treveri served as an important source of propaganda for the entirety of the western empire during the first quarter of the fourth century AD. Constantine and Licinius both drew upon a variety of reverse designs in order to signify such ideas as strength, tranquility, and prosperity, though matters between the two were ever-unstable as war broke out between them in AD 316, most likely over a mutual envy and mistrust of one another. The resulting peace in early AD 317 was short-lived and tensions were only subdued, as hostilities once again gradually increased, culminating in the battle of Chrysopolis in AD 324, the execution of the Licinii, and the sole-reign of the house of Constantine.