CNG 100, Lot: 450. Estimate $1000. Sold for $1700. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

UNCERTAIN GERMANIC TRIBES. Pseudo-Imperial coinage. AV Tremissis (14mm, 1.43 g, 6h). In the name of Byzantine emperor Anastasius (491-518). D N ΛNΛSTΛSIVS P ΛVC, diademed, draped, and cuirassed bust right / VICTORSΛ ΛVCOSTΛVI, Victory advancing right, head left, holding wreath and globus cruciger; star to right; CONOB. Cf. COI 40; cf. MEC 1, 351-4. EF, toned with underlying luster.

From the collection of Dr. Lawrence A. Adams. Ex Peus 307 (9 May 1983), lot 441.

A difficult coin to assign with much certainty. The Peus cataloger gave it to the Ticinum mint under the Ostrogothic King Baduila (541-552), presumably following Wroth’s (BMC pp. 84-5, 2-13) attribution of finer-style specimens. Kent (“Coinage of Theoderic in the names of Anastasius and Justin I,” Essays Baldwin, p. 69) suggested that the abbreviated form of the end of the obverse legend, with a single P (see especially BMC 5 and 8), was particularly characteristic of the mint of Milan. The unusually simplistic style and blundered legends on the current coin, however, may point to this being a degenerate copy (perhaps Merovingian?) of an Ostrogothic issue.