53, Lot: 53. Estimate $150. Sold for $90. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

PHRYGIA, Laodicea ad Lycum. Tiberius (?) 14-31 AD. Æ 19mm (6.24 gm). Struck by Dioskourides, magistrate "to deuteron" ("for the second time.") Bare head right, SEBA-STOS / Zeus Laodikeos standing left, holding eagle and sceptre. RPC I 2911; BMC Phrygia pg. 301, 143 (as Augustus). VF, die break obverse, black patina with some earthen highlights. ($150)

RPC's attribution of this issue to Tiberius seems at first to rest on flimsy grounds. The "mature portrait", the "second issue" of this and another magistrate, and the use of "SEBASTOS" for other coins thought to be of Tiberius, for example. A better argument is added, that no city in southern Phrygia issues "SEBASTOS" coins along with "TIBERIUS" coins - it is always an "either-or proposition. A last argument is that unless the "SEBASTOS" coinage of southern Phrygia is attributed to Tiberius, a huge gap in coinage would remain to be explained some other way. Perhaps none of these arguments would stand alone, but in sum, they make a reasonable case. (See RPC I, pp. 376 and 475.)