411, Lot: 202. Estimate $100. Sold for $425. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

COMMAGENE, Samosata. Mid 1st century BC. Æ Tetrachalkon (24mm, 12.59 g, 12h). Eagle standing right, wings spread / Tyche seated right on rocks, holding palm frond. Kovacs 288; RPC I 3848; AC 242. VF, dark green-brown patina. Overstruck on a bronze of Antioch dated ΘI = Pompeian Era 19 ( = 48/7 BC), McAlee 44. Very rare.

From the Aram Manasaryan Collection. Ex Agora Auctions 21 (25 November 2014), lot 62.

The undertype of this coin requires a reassessment of Kovacs’s assignment of the Samosatan coinage to two series. In his book, he notes that there is no consensus on the dating of the 1st century BC bronzes of Samosata, but suggests that they comprise two series, with the first possibly belonging to the periods in which autonomous issues were struck in other cities, either 57/6-54/3 BC or 66/5 BC. He further suggests that the second series, by virtue of their consistent overstriking and blundered legends, was an emergency issue that could belong to the siege of Samosata in 38 BC. As the present coin, which Kovacs placed in the first series, was overstruck on a coin dated to 48/7 BC, it must either belong to the second series, or the first series must belong to a period of autonomous coinage at Samosata struck between 48/7 and 38 BC.