Watch List notes:

Trajan Decius. AE 28; Trajan Decius; 249-251 AD, Thessalonica, Macedonia, AE 28, 15.41g. RPC-143 (5 spec., including ours as spec. 3); Touratsoglou-3 (p. 302, V1/R2, only one spec., in Berlin). Obv: AVT KAIC.KVIN - TPAIAN[OC ?EKIOC] Radiate, draped, cuirassed bust r. Rx: TECCA?O - NIKH K - O MH.? NE[OKOPOC] around, ? also in upper middle field, Four prize crowns, each containing two palm branches. Ex CNG 55, 13 September 2000, lot 920. The coins of Decius and his family at Thessalonica are all very rare, and are moreover of considerable historical importance. Of our particular coin, Touratsoglou's corpus of Thessalonica's provincial coinage contained only two specimens, one, in Berlin, from the same die pair as ours, and the other, in BM, from the same obverse die but a different reverse die. As to the historical importance, C. Clay wrote as follows in the Forvm Ancient Coins online discussion group: "The coins of Decius and family at Thessalonika are of exceptional historical importance. As R. Ziegler has shown, they demonstrate that Decius' victory over his predecessor Philip I must have taken place near Beroea in Macedonia, as a single late Greek author reports, not at Verona in N. Italy, as all of the Latin authors state, an error which most modern historians have taken over. Thessalonica was merely Neokoros on the coins of Philip I and family, but under Decius, as the coins and surviving inscriptions attest, it received an immense and unprecedented increase in its status: suddenly it became FOUR TIMES Neokoros, COLONY, and, instead of Beroea, the former Metropolis of Macedonia, METROPOLIS! There is only one course of events, Ziegler suggests, that could explain such extravagant honoring of Thessalonica by Decius. Decius' confrontation with Philip must have taken place in Macedonia, and Philip will have established himself in Beroea, the capital of the province. Thessalonica, Beroea's rival and neighbor, however, must have opted to side with Decius, receiving and provisioning his army and so providing essential aid for his victory over Philip. "Beroea" is written very much like "Verona" in Greek, and was obviously misread in that way by a Latin author, whose mistake was then repeated by all of the surviving Latin sources!"Green patination
($600)