Ex Bement Collection – Banti Plate Coin

CNG 111, Lot: 736. Estimate $1000. Sold for $700. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

Commodus. AD 177-192. Æ Sestertius (30.5mm, 26.89 g, 6h). Rome mint. Struck AD 190. Laureate head right / Genius standing left, holding cornucopia and sacrificing from patera over lighted altar to left. RIC III 561; MIR 18, 797-6/30; Banti 86 (this coin referenced and illustrated). Good VF, green-brown patina, light smoothing.

Ex Clarence S. Bement Collection (Naville VIII, 25 June 1924), lot 1112.

Clarence Sweet Bement (1843-1923) was a manufacturing magnate in Philadelphia, PA whose outside interests spanned minerals, books, and historical coins. In each of these spheres, he assembled legendary collections that either became the core of important national holdings (his mineral collection now resides with the American Museum of Natural History in New York) or highly sought-after pedigrees for latter-day collectors. Bement’s coin collection included United States, foreign and ancient coins; in the ancients category, they included all types of Greek and Roman coinage. He was a keen observer of European auctions and private dealers, and not afraid to spend what were then considered enormous sums to acquire coins of outstanding beauty and rarity. His ancients collection was sold in Naville VIII in June, 1924, a sale that became a benchmark of high-quality cataloguing for later generations.