298, Lot: 274. Estimate $150. Sold for $360. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

Antoninus Pius. AD 138-161. Æ As (24mm, 11.12 g, 12h). Rome mint (or mint in Britain?). Struck AD 155. Laureate head right / Britannia, in attitude of mourning, seated left on rock, propping head on right hand and placing left hand on rock; large round shield with central spike and vexillum projecting upwards to left. RIC III 934. VF, brown surfaces, typical short flan, light roughness.

Ex Robert O. Ebert Collection.

There is some debate as to whether or not the “Britannia” asses of Antoninus Pius were struck in the Roman province of Britannia itself. The latest scholarship (cp. D.R. Walker, The Temple of Sulis Minerva at Bath: Volume 2, the Finds from the Sacred Spring, pp. 295-296) repeatedly alludes to the coins as "British associated," and is careful to draw the line between declaring either a British or a Roman manufacture. In regards to the “Britannia” dupondii, Walker does state that they were produced in Rome for shipment to Britain, and it is unlikely that the asses would have been manufactured at a mint other than the same as that striking the dupondii. Nevertheless, the peculiar fabric of this issue, so different than that which is normally encountered and is of unquestionable provenance, as well as the fact that not a single specimen has been excavated outside of Britain would seem to indicate that provincial manufacture is a likely possibility.