Ex 1931 Martini & Traverso Sale

420, Lot: 375. Estimate $200. Sold for $320. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

Anonymous. 211-208 BC. Æ Triens (25.4mm, 13.22 g, 3h). Apex and hammer “heavy” series. Mint in central Italy. Helmeted head of Minerva right; •••• (mark of value) above / Prow of galley right; hammer and apex above, •••• (mark of value) to right. Crawford 59/4; Sydenham 150b; Type as RBW 236. VF, dark brown surfaces, minor roughness. Rare.

From the Andrew McCabe Collection. Ex Joseph Martini & Valerio Traverso Collections (Baranowsky, 25 February 1931), lot 827.

This has a remarkably early provenance for a struck bronze, from an era when it was usual to illustrate only the finest gold and silver on catalogue plates. The few bronzes that appear in these early auctions were the best then available. Giuseppe Martini was born in Italy in 1870 and lived in New York from 1912 to 1922 and in Switzerland from 1929; the catalogue describes him as “Mr. Joseph Martini of New York”. Valerio Traverso lived in Genoa, and as his focus was Roman Republican coins, this coin likely came from his collection. [A. McCabe]