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Research Coins: Electronic Auction

 

Extremely Rare & Important Celti As

314, Lot: 2. Estimate $750.
Sold for $1900. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

IBERIA, Celti/Celtitan. Circa 200-150 BC. Æ As (33mm, 23.14 g, 12h). Diademed and draped male head right / CELTITAN, boar standing right on spear-head. O. Simkin, “The Celtic coin that says it is?,” Chris Rudd FPL 107, fig. 1 (this coin); ACIP 2427; CNH 1; SNG BM Spain –. VF, mostly dark green patina, some gray and red on reverse. Extremely rare and among the finest known. An important and elusive coin for collectors of Celtic.


Ex Chris Rudd FPL 107 (September 2009), no. 1.

This extremely rare coin of Celti/Celtitan (thought to be modern day Peñaflor on the Guadalquivir river) has a reverse legend that can be expanded to CELTITAN(orum) or CELTITAN(um), identifying it as a coin of the Celtitani or the people of Celti. It would seem to imply that the town was founded by Celts from the north, not Celtiberians, and as such is an unprecedented statement of Celtic curtural identity. As Simkin states in his brief but interesting essay cited above (p. 2): this would apparenlty make our CELTITAN bronze the only known attestation of the ethnonym ‘Celt’ in a coin legend; in other words, the only Celtic coin that says it is.