278, Lot: 424. Estimate $200. Sold for $400. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

temp. Justinian I(?). 527-565. AR Third Siliqua (15mm, 0.97 g, 6h). Constantinople mint. Struck circa 530. Draped bearded bust right / Large K. Apparently unpublished. Near VF, lightly toned.

Ex William Herbert Hunt Collection (Sotheby’s New York, 21 June 1991), lot 122 (part of).

This enigmatic piece does not match any of the issues published by Bendall (“Some Comments on the Anonymous Silver Coinage of the Fourth to Sixth Centuries AD,” in RN 158, p. 139-60), who attributed the series to the founding and bicentennial of Constantinople. Although the iconography does not quite fit with that of the rest of the series, and an attribution to a bearded emperor is tempting, both the metrology and the thick, beaded borders suggest a relation to commemorative silver coins of struck under Justinian.