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Research Coins: Electronic Auction

 
442, Lot: 537. Estimate $150.
Sold for $170. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

Macrianus. Usurper, AD 260-261. Antoninianus (21mm, 3.64 g, 6h). Normal style. Samosata mint. IMP C FVL MACRIANVS P F AVG, radiate and cuirassed bust right / AEQVTAS AVGG (sic), Aequitas standing left, holding scales and cornucopiae. MIR 44, 1727b; RIC V 5; Cunetio 1917. VF, some silver content, a little porosity.


Ex Spink 94 (14 October 1992), lot 254; ‘Gibraltar’ (Jimena de la Frontera) Hoard (1962) [NC 1962, pp. 335–406].

The location and even the number of mints from which coins of these two short-lived emperors were issued have been a matter for discussion for very many years. Mattingly and Sydenham, in RIC V part 2, published originally in 1933, attributed all the coins to the mint of Antioch, but Mattingly (1954) concluded that there had also been a second mint (possibly Emesa), on the grounds that some of the antoniniani are stylistically different from, and much cruder than, the majority. In more recent studies, such as the Cunetio hoard publication, the coins were attributed to the so-called ‘second Eastern mint’. Göbl, in MIR 44, identified the mint as Samosata, but distinguished the two styles by labelling the cruder issues as ‘An3’ in Tabelle 52. In this catalogue I have followed MIR 44, but to clarify the distinction between the two styles I have described each antoninianus as being of ‘normal’ or ‘cruder’ style.