New! An unlisted and particular Sestertius of Antoninus Pius

We know the attributes of each Roman allegory, yet sometimes we see some visuals showing us what we call "variants". This is the case here with this coin. Once again, it was a friend who showed me this coin. He thought he had a perfectly normal Antoninus Pius Sestertius. I remember immediately seeing that something was strange. In the second he showed me this coin, I thinked that Annona seemed to have a lot of things in her hands.

For the Obvers, everything is normal:

A/ ANTONINVS AVG PIVS PP IMP II Laureate bust of Antonius Pius to the right.

On the reverse we have:

R/ T R POT XXI COS IIII S-C Annona standing left, with a modius on the ground. She holds ears in her right hand. In her left hand she holds a rudder and a cornucopia.

It is on the reverse side that the variant is found. Usually Annona is found with this modius, ears of corn and rudder on the right. But the rudder is placed on a prow, out here there is no prow and we added a cornucopia. At this point, I knew that this coin had probably not been listed yet. Why? Because, in general, the coins of this period vary little in their visuals. In any case, the variants are minimal. However here it is flagrantly!

Conscious of the immensity of the coins already examined, poorly described, etc., in the works, including the very rare works; I decided to show this coin to Curtis Clay (among others) who is a world renowned expert. It is important to show these types of coins to other specialists because each has collected various books and the pooling of libraries allows to know a little more if the coin has already been seen. There are so many old books (and very hard find for some), small books showing sales results ... where a coin not listed in the best-known books can hide ... That the meeting of libraries as well as the to know is necessary. When I speak of knowing, I mean that I have seen coins that Curtis Clay has never seen and he himself has seen coins that I do not know about.

About this coin Curtis, me and other specialists, are agreed that this is a variant of RIC 981 (same legend). Which is why she was probably struck between 157 and 158. Curtis mentions and I quote:

'' Not only was Annona given a cornucopia, instead of just holding the top of the rudder, but the prow behind Annona was eliminated, on which the rudder usually rested.

It would seem that Strack may have seen this variant with cornucopia and no prow, for this is exactly the type he describes as his no. 1140: Annona standing left, holding wheat ears over modius, plus cornucopia and rudder. Yet Strack does not describe the type without cornucopia and with prow, so maybe his no. 1140 erroneously includes specimens of both varieties. The collections he cites: both sestertii and dupondii of the type in Berlin, Paris, and Vienna. Unfortunately he provides no illustration. ''

 None of us therefore know if this variant has been seen before. In any case, now, I have made this coin known and I also have the photos. This coin will be added soon to the database of the site!