408, Lot: 379. Estimate $300. Sold for $380. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

Anonymous. 212 or 208 BC. Æ Sextans (20mm, 7.19 g, 7h). Spearhead series. Mint in Sardinia. Head of Mercury right, wearing winged petasus; • • (mark of value) above / Prow of galley right; ROMA above, spearhead to right, • • (mark of value) below. Crawford 88/7; Sydenham –; RBW 379 (this coin); Russo, "Unpublished Roman Republican Bronze Coins," in Essays Hersh, pp. 142-3. Good VF, atractive dark brown patina with light green highlights. Extremely rare.

From the Andrew McCabe Collection. Ex RBW Collection (Numismatica Ars Classica 61, 5 October 2011), lot 386; Tkalec AG (8 September 2008), lot 232 (realized CHF 750).

Roberto Russo, in “Unpublished Roman Republican Bronze Coins” in Essays Hersh, pp. 142-143, noted several varieties of the RRC 88 spearhead bronzes: one that is a post-war issue from an uncertain mint; a second that he considered an Apulian issue of the Second Punic War; and a third is a much later issue from Rome. This coin is clearly a sextans of the second issue, with a rectangular deck structure, no dotted line mid prow, and a large spearhead that resembles a vine leaf.

I have re-examined this issue, and in a paper presented at the 2015 International Numismatic Congress in Taormina (“ The Roman Struck Bronze Coinage of Apulia in the Second Punic War”), I have shown that this second Russo group hails from Sardinia and is a Second Punic War issue related to RRC 63 C, 64 MA, and 65 AVR issues. Since the moneyers of these issues are presumed to be the Sardinian quaestors Cornelius, Manlius, and Aurunculeius of 211-209 BC, this spearhead issue, of exactly the same style, should be placed either in 212 BC or 208 BC. It is a very rare issue and none are to be found in either Sardinian or (in this style) Apulian contexts, so we must rely on style and fabric. Perhaps the spearhead relates to a specific Roman leader who campaigned in both Sardinia and Apulia? [Andrew McCabe]