Late Roman Bronze Coins
Coin talk => COTD => Topic started by: Victor on September 15, 2020, 11:41:18 AM
Not bronze, but it's still a neat campgate. It celebrates a victory against the Sarmatians, who would not be DEVICTA until Constantine handled it. The turrets have eagles on them.
What I thought was interesting was that this coin ended up on eBay and the route it took. The first auction listing I found for it was 2012 from Lanz where it was unsold with an 800 EUR estimate. The next auction was Gitbud & Naumann in 2013 where it sold for $710. The last auction was Gadoury in 2015 where it sold for $753. On eBay, in 2020, it only sold for $376.55...how the mighty have fallen!
Diocletian
A.D. 295
AR Argenteus
19mm 3.3g
DIOCLETIANVS AVG; laureate head right.
VICTORIAE SARMATICAE; four turreted camp-gate, open, with doors thrown back; each turret surmounted by facing eagle.
In ex. SMNĪ
RIC VI Nicomedia 22a
Nice coin! I did not even see that one on ebay.
Nice catch!
It goes in other direction too ... saw a "LON" nummus sell end of last year on eBay for $250 then few months later same coin sells at UK auction house "from the collection of a gentleman" for $1500 ! ::)
I plan on keeping this one for a while, but maybe when my coins are eventually sold, this one will also be described as "from the collection of a gentleman" ;D
it's a shame what the seller did to this coin, but I will be cracking it open as soon as I get it.
I was playing around with acsearch's image search service and used my photo of the coin and it actually returned the three auction results that I posted about above. If you are someone that likes to research past auctions for provenance, it may be worth a shot. I think it costs about a dollar each search. Interestingly, the last two matches were not very strong, due to differences in the pictures.
I am glad to see that acsearch's image search works. I tried it for my only Aes grave as I lack any provenance whatsoever but unfortunately nothing popped up for me. These days for more expensive items I tend to ask and look for some provenance but it seems most major auction houses either refuse to give it or ignore any ideas around potentially providing it.
Sometimes auction houses don't give provenance because they don't want customers knowing where they get their coins and sometimes it is because consignors don't want the info out.