Gordian III, Balbinus and Pupienus

165, Lot: 166. Estimate $100. Sold for $525. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

CILICIA, Augusta(?). Gordian III. AD 238-244. Æ 31mm (14.03 g). AVT K M ANT GORDIANO C CE, laureate, draped and cuirassed bust right / ET...TANWN, laureate and draped busts of Balbinus and Pupienus vis-á-vis. Unlisted in the major references. Fine, rough surfaces.

The city identification is highly conjectural, arrived at by process of elimination; Augusta in Cilicia seems to be the only city whose ethnic ends in TANWN with the date formula ET (OVC) in the legend. No other positive reading of the remaining letters can be made out. In any case, a most remarkable coin, with an early portrait of Gordian III based on the portrait of the last legitimate young emperor, Severus Alexander, and with dual portraits of the emperors who raised Gordian to the purple after the deaths of his grandfather and uncle. Probably struck early in the first year of Gordian’s reign.