Dardanian Mine Issue

Sale: Triton XIII, Lot: 1449. Estimate $750.  Closing Date: Monday, 4 January 2010.  Sold For $750. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

Trajan. AD 98-117. Æ Quadrans (3.02 g, 6h). Dardanian mines issue. Rome mint. Struck circa AD 98-102. Laureate head right / DARDANICI, Pax standing facing, head left, holding olive branch and gathering up drapery. RIC II 703; cf. Simic & Vasic 6. EF, dark green and brown patina, light smoothing. Rare.

Under Trajan and Hadrian several series of bronze quadrantes were struck in the names of the imperial mines in Noricum, Dalmatia, Pannonia, and Moesia (Dardania). These operations supplied metal for the mint at Rome, and perhaps were the sites of workshops to produce coinage for local circulation or as donatives. It has been suggested that these mines issues were struck at Rome itself, and served some unidentified function, much as the contemporary 'nome' coinage struck at Alexandria in Egypt. Whatever the circumstances, these pieces saw limited use, and except for one rare type struck by Marcus Aurelius, were not issued during any other period.