Unpublished Overstrike

385, Lot: 448. Estimate $100. Sold for $3000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

D. Silanus L.f. 91 BC. Æ As (27mm, 9.51 g, 10h). Rome mint. Laureate head of bearded Janus; I (mark of value) above / Prow of galley right; [D•SILANVS•L•F] above. Crawford 337/5; Sydenham 649; Types as RBW 1234. Near VF, dark green patina, some roughness and cleaning scratches. Extremely rare.

From the Andrew McCabe Collection. Ex RBW Collection duplicate, purchased from Christian Blom, 1984.

Crawford in RRC Table XVIII did not identify any semuncial period overstrikes, nor were any published by Charles Hersh; this is the first published example I am aware of. The overtype is an as of D. Junius Silanus, dating from 91 BC, Cr. 337/5, as its obverse die matches RBW 1234 (NAC 63, lot 9); the reverse is from a different die. The undertype is a Roman Republican semis, witness under the obverse bust the value mark S sideways, and above the prow at 10h another S; the curls of Saturn’s head can be seen below the obverse S and a prow slanted up at about 20 degrees can be seen on the reverse. The zigzag style of the reverse S suggests this may be an imitative issue, and the undertype seems a close match to the probable imitative illustrated in McCabe (Essays Russo) p. 213, coin IM.6. In Essays Burnett, pp. 51-108, Ripolles and Witschonke, “The Unofficial Roman Republican Semisses Struck in Spain,” provide a die study and corpus of these Spanish semisses; the style of McCabe coin IM.6 is not included in that study. We learn three new things from this unique overtype, that the Romans overstruck bronzes at the outset of the Social War, that the apparently imitative undertype is likely of Italian origin, supporting its exclusion from the Ripolles–Witschonke study, and that such imitatives pre-date the Social War, contra the generally accepted view that dates them to the first century BC. Of the greatest interest and rarity. [A. McCabe]