Sale: CNG 66, Lot: 1627. Estimate $500.  Closing Date: Wednesday, 19 May 2004.  Sold For $500. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

CONSTANTINE I, with CRISPUS and CONSTANTINE II, Caesars. 307-337 AD. AR Miliarense (4.56 gm). Sirmium mint. Struck 320 AD. Bare head right / Confronted heads of Crispus and Constantine II; SIRM. RIC VII 14; Gnecchi pl. 29, 8; Bastien, Donativa, pg. 76, note 11; Cohen 3. Toned Fine, reverse scratch and light field marks. Very rare. ($500)

The coinage of Constantine's long reign is very complex. He instituted several important currency reforms, including the introduction of a new gold coin (the solidus) and, later in the reign, the reestablishment of coinage in pure silver (e.g. siliqua). This rare dynastic type, struck at the Danubian mint of Sirmium, depicts on the reverse the emperor's two elder sons — Flavius Julius Crispus, the issue of Constantine's marriage to Minervina (his first wife or, perhaps, merely a concubine); and Flavius Claudius Constantinus, the eldest of Constantine's three sons by Flavia Maxima Fausta, daughter of the emperor Maximianus. The head of Crispus, who was aged about twenty-one at the time of the issue, is depicted larger and more mature than that of his half-brother who was only eight. This base silver coin, which is sometimes described as a ‘small medallion’ or a ‘multiple,’ is of an experimental denomination which preceded the reintroduction of pure silver coinage about 325 AD. It should probably be called a miliarensis which is the name applied to the pure silver coin of the same weight (4.5 grams = 1/72 of a pound) struck regularly after 325 AD.