Banti Plate Coin

420, Lot: 482. Estimate $150. Sold for $260. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

Commodus. AD 177-192. Æ Sestertius (32mm, 23.00 g, 11h). Rome mint. Struck AD 192. Laureate bust right, slight drapery / Libertas standing left, holding pileus and vindicta; star in left field. RIC III 619; MIR 18, 850-6/32; Banti 170 (this coin illustrated) corr. (slight drapery not mentioned). Good VF, green patina, areas of roughness.

Ex J. Schulman 262 (14 May 1975), lot 1376.

According to A Dictionary of Ancient Roman Coins by John Melville Jones, “Libertas”, the vindicta, which Libertas carries, was “the rod with which a slave was touched during the ceremony of manumission or liberation.”