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Research Coins: Electronic Auction

 

Extremely Rare Galba Denarius

241, Lot: 325. Estimate $300.
Sold for $1100. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

Galba. AD 68-69. AR Denarius (18mm, 3.19 g, 8h). Lugdunum (Lyon) mint. Struck November AD 68-15 January 69. IMP GALBA CAESAR AVG P P, laureate head right / AEQVITAS [AVG], Aequitas standing left, holding scales and cornucopia. RIC I 122 var. (globe at point of bust); BMCRE -; Lyon -; Hunter -; Cohen -; RSC -; UKDFD no. 4300 (this coin). Good Fine, toned, some roughness and porosity. Extremely rare; the second known example of this reverse type, and the only one without a globe and held privately, as the specimen cited in RIC is from the BM Collection, though not present at the time of the reference’s publication (see story below).


Found in Staffordshire, 2002.

The following is an edited version of an article written about this coin, appearing in the April 2003 issue of The Searcher:

Illustrated at the top of this page is a silver denarius of Galba, which was found in Staffordshire. This is quite a nice find as coins of this emperor don’t turn up very often. On the obverse is the right-facing bust of Galba (not the best looking of blokes) and the legend IMP GALBA CAESAR AVG P P. On the reverse is the figure of Aequitas, holding scales and cornucopia, and the legend AEQVITAS (the lettering facing outwards and in reverse, which is a feature of some coins of this period). When the finder looked up this reverse in the latest edition of Sear’s Roman Coins and Their Values he could find no reference to it. Thinking he may have a rarity he telephoned a leading London coin dealing firm, whose representative told him that the AEQVITAS reverse is well known. However, when pressed the person had to admit that he didn’t know of a Galba denarius with this reverse. As he was keen to know more about his coin the finder decided to contact the Identification and Valuation desk in The Searcher.

We searched through many, many reference works and catalogues but couldn’t find a denarius of Galba with an AEQVITAS reverse. The nearest we got to it was in an old edition of Roman Imperial Coinage, which listed a coin with the same obverse and reverse but this was a gold aureus rather than a silver denarius. However, if a gold coin was struck with this die combination then so might a silver coin – even though there seemed to be no record of one. At this point we contacted the British Museum, whose collection of classical coins is second to none, to see if the staff there had ever heard of a variety of Galba denarius similar to this example. We received a reply pretty quickly (which is unusual for this institution) from Richard Abdy, who informed us that the British Museum acquisition number is 1977 9-11 and that the coin had originally been part of a small hoard found during an archaeological dig in York in 1977 (An Inventory of Romano-British Coin Hoards, entry number 57). The British Museum acquired two coins from this hoard, one of which was a Galba denarius with the AEQVITAS reverse. Mr. Abdy told us this has been published as coin number 122 in the revised edition (1984) of Roman Imperial Coiange. In RIC it is listed as R2 (Very Rare) and the source for the coin is stated to be the British Museum collection.

It would seem, then, that a Galba denarius with AEQVITAS reverse first surfaced in York during 1977 and was first published in 1984. As no others have been traced and as the specimen published in RIC is from the single example in the British Museum, this denarius is only the second known coin of its type. Rather than being R2 (Very Rare) it would be no exaggeration to describe it as excessively rare.