432, Lot: 322. Estimate $500. Sold for $320. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

Antoninus Pius. AD 138-161. Æ Sestertius (30mm, 22.80 g, 10h). Rome mint. Struck AD 139. ANTONINVS AVG PI VS P P TR P COS II, laureate head right / SALVS AVG, Salus standing facing, head left, holding patera and rudder on globe. RIC III –; Banti –. Good VF, dark brown patina with touches of green and red, smoothed and tooled.

Ex Artemide Aste XLVIII (2 December 2017), lot 378.

An interesting coin that, unfortunately has been tooled. RIC only cites one sestertius (RIC III 544; Diana standing left) with this obverse legend. One could assume that whomever tooled the coin, just erased the third I and it should read COS III, but then a new problem arises (no pun intended) that the reverse type of Salus holding a patera and rudder, but without the serpent coiled around an altar below, does not exist, at least in RIC and Banti. It does not appear that the snake and altar have been tooled off, so perhaps it is a new type for COS II, but we would need another, untooled, example to confirm this theory.