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Research Coins: Electronic Auction

 
442, Lot: 530. Estimate $150.
Sold for $260. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

Gallienus. AD 253-268. Æ trial striking from dupondius dies? (21mm, 4.86 g, 7h). GALLIENVS AVG, radiate head right / PAX AVG, Pax standing facing, head left, holding olive branch and transverse sceptre; S C across field. Good VF, waxed black brown surfaces. Some smoothing in the fields.


Bought from Baldwin's, 2008.

This is a very strange piece indeed. Normally a bronze coin with radiate portrait on the obverse and S C across the reverse field would be identifiable as a dupondius – a denomination apparently very rarely struck at this period anyway – but this is so far removed from any known dupondius that its origins must be highly questionable. First, it has been struck on a very small, irregular, angular flan. Second, the imperial portrait consists only of head and neck, whereas all known dupondii have busts which extend to the shoulders. Third, the style is much cruder than found on official bronze issues from the Rome mint. The coin could be seen as an attempt to copy dupondii of type MIR 439k, which have the same reverse legend and type, but these also have legend IMP GALLIENVS P F AVG. The style of the head, insofar as can be determined, most closely resembles that found on antoniniani of the Siscia mint, and the coin is said to have been found in south-eastern Europe, which may be significant (Siscia being in modern Croatia). That mint is not known to have struck any bronze coins of course, but medallions with reverse PAX AVG (Pax seated) were attributed to it by Göbl (MIR 1412 nn and 1412oo). It is possible, therefore, to envisage a proposal for bronze coins to be struck there, although for what purpose is open to conjecture, with dies being prepared and tested, but in the event never used to strike coins.