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Research Coins: Electronic Auction

 
443, Lot: 441. Estimate $100.
Sold for $220. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

Anonymous. 209 BC. Æ Semis (27mm, 9.66 g, 12h). Spearhead series. Mint in southeast Italy. Laureate head of Saturn right; S (mark of value) to left / Prow of galley right; spearhead to right, S (mark of value) above. Crawford 88/4; Sydenham –; Type as RBW 375. VF, dark brown patina with traces of red, some pitting. Very rare.


From the Andrew McCabe Collection. Ex RBW Collection Duplicate; Astarte XIV (24 April 2004), lot 276.

Roberto Russo, in “Unpublished Roman Republican Bronze Coins” in Essays Hersh, pp. 142-143, noted several varieties of the RRC 88 spearhead bronzes: one that is a post-war issue from an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 semis of the second issue, with a rectangular deck structure, no dotted line mid prow, a line-delineated prow stem, 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 the 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]