Postumus A.D. 260-269, Billon Silver Antoninianus, Extremely Fine

Billon Antoninianus of Quintillus, one of the shortest ruling Roman Emperors

These Billon Silver coins were minted between A.D.1022 and A.D.1135, making them between 900 and1000 years old! They were created in India by those who fled the Islamic expansion and were based on Sassanian coins showing the side facing bust of the monarch on the obverse and a fire altar on the reverse. As time went by, they started to get less and less realistic as the reason for the designs were lost. This means that the coins we have from around 300 years later are very abstract! The stories of Sinbad the Sailor are based on the sea voyages that Arabic peoples made down across the Indian Ocean to Ceylon and these are the coins that the sailors would have found on their journeys. We offer you these Silver Billon coins called Gadhaiya Paisa that were the major trade coins of medieval India. The obverse shows a stylised head facing to the right with the reverse showing a fire altar made from abstract dots and lines.

Before the Crisis of the Third Century, most cities in the Roman Empire did not have walls, dried fruit from Syria could be bought in Britain and copper from Cornwall was traded in Egypt! Sadly this did not last and continuing with our series we offer one of the harder major Emperors to get from the Crisis, Claudius II Gothicus. Born around A.D. 214 he had held several important military commands during the reigns of Valerian I and Gallienus. When Gallienus was murdered at the siege of Milan, Claudius was swiftly proclaimed emperor by the troops and approved by the Senate. He took the city of Milan and suppressed the rebellion. He quickly defeated the invading Alemanni tribe, then the invading Goths in A.D. 269, winning the title ‘Gothicus Maximus’. Next year the Goths attacked again in Thrace, but an outbreak of plague left them so weak they were again defeated by Claudius. But the plague spread from the captured Goths to the Roman army. Claudius himself fell victim and died of plague at Sirmium in August A.D. 269. He was the turning point in the fortunes of the Roman Empire, the beginning of a long struggle back to stability after The Crisis. We offer Billon Antoninianus with various reverses in an About Very Fine grade with various reverses. As is typical with these coins from The Crisis some will have weaker sections and the first to order will get the best! Claudius Gothicus is one of the hardest Crisis emperors to get so these will run out fast.