Sale: Triton VI, Lot: 529. Estimate $500.  Closing Date: Monday, 13 January 2003.  Sold For $1000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

SASANIAN KINGS of PERSIA. Queen Buran. 629-631 AD. AR Drachm (3.62 gm). SK=Sakastan mint. Dated year 3 (631 AD). Crowned bust / Fire altar with attendants. Malek & Curtis 29ff; Paruck 477 var. (mint); Göbl I/1; Sellwood 71. EF. ($500) 

This is the only portrait of a queen during her sole rule in the entire Sasanian coinage. Only three women are known to have issued or appeared on Sasanian coins: Shapurduxtag, who appeared with her husband, Varahran II; Buran; and Buran's sister, Azarmigduxt. Azarmigduxt's reign was apparently so short that no portrait was prepared for her coins, which are so rare that they were not even identified until the 1970's. Instead they show her name but the portrait of her father, Khusro II.