Triton XXII, Lot: 1055. Estimate $2000. Sold for $3500. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

Titus. AD 79-81. Æ Sestertius (33.5mm, 26.09 g, 6h). Uncertain mint, possibly in Thrace. Struck AD 80-81. IMP T CAES DIVI VESP F AVG P M TR P P P COS VIII, laureate head right / Mars, nude except for cloak and helmet, advancing right, holding spear with his right hand and trophy over shoulder with his left; S C across field. RIC II 499 (same obv. die as illustration); BMCRE 310 (Lyon); BN 324 (Mint in Bithynia); RPC II 502. EF, brown surfaces, minor smoothing, some fill around feet of Mars. Forceful portrait of Titus.

From the Gasvoda Collection. Ex Numismatica Ars Classica 94 (6 October 2016), lot 171; Gorny & Mosch 169 (12 October 2008), lot 275.

The Flavian and Julio Claudian coinages include an enigmatic series of large bronzes with Latin legends and a distinctive broad fabric that were clearly not produced at at the regular mints of Rome and Lugdunum. Carradice and Buttrey, in RIC II, describe this mint as producing coins with "large portraits with heavy, muscular necks, large reverse figures and lettering that tends to be crowded and heavily seriffed." Various experts have placed this mint in Gaul, Bithynia, or Thrace; David R. Sear argues for a short-lived officina in Rome.