Marcus Aurelius. AD 161-180. AV Aureus (19mm, 7.18 g, 6h). Rome mint. Struck AD 161. NGC AU, 5/5, 4/5.

CNG Feature Auction 132
Lot: 797. Estimated: $ 7 500

Roman Imperial, Gold

Sold For $ 10 000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

Go to Live

Marcus Aurelius. AD 161-180. AV Aureus (19mm, 7.18 g, 6h). Rome mint. Struck AD 161. Bare head right / Marcus Aurelius, togate, and Lucius Verus, togate, standing vis-à-vis, clasping hands and each holding a volumen. RIC III 8; MIR 18, 15-2/10; Calicó 1822 (this coin illustrated); BMCRE 7; Biaggi 842 var. (bust type); Mazzini –. Toned. In NGC encapsulation 4372904-071, graded AU, Strike: 5/5, Surface: 4/5.

Ex Numismatic Fine Arts XIV (29 November 1984), lot 426.

Hadrian, childless and without either a successor or heir, chose Lucius Ceionius Commodus as his adopted son in AD 136 and renamed him Lucius Aelius Caesar. Aelius was sent to the Roman province of Pannonia to serve as governor, where he unexpectedly died in AD 138. Hadrian now made his second choice for his heir, Titus Aurelius Fulvus Boionius Antoninus. Hadrian actually wanted Marcus Aurelius to succeed him on the throne but realized that Aurelius was far too young, so instead he went with the highly respected Antoninus. As a condition of his adoption, and to ensure an orderly line of succession, Antoninus Pius adopted both his nephew, Marcus Aurelius, and Aelius Caesar’s son, Lucius. The relatively young Lucius would change his name to Lucius Aelius Aurelius Commodus, but he would later drop Commodus and add Verus after ascending to the throne, along with his adoptive brother and co-ruler Marcus Aurelius.

The final winners of all CNG Feature Auction 132 lots will be determined at the live online sale that will be held on 18-19 May 2026.

CNG Feature Auction 132 – Session Three – Lot 588-888 will be held Tuesday morning, 19 May 2026 beginning at 9:00 AM ET.

Winning bids are subject to a 22.5% buyer's fee for bids placed on this website and 25% for all others.

We recognize that our users may have various Internet Browsers and Operating Systems. We like our visitors to have the best possible experience when using our bidding platform. However, we do recognize that it is impossible to develop applications that work identically, efficiently and effectively on all web browsers. The CNG bidding platform supports the latest stable major version and stable previous version of Chrome and Firefox.