Victory and spearhead series Æ Quadrans. Rome, circa 189-180 BC. Head of Hercules to right, wearing lion's skin; ••• (mark of value) behind / Prow of galley to right; Victory crowning spearhead above, ••• (mark of value) before, ROMA below. Crawford 145/4; Sydenham 293c; RBW 649 (this coin). 8.16g, 20mm, 6h.
Very Fine. Very Rare.
From the Andrew McCabe Collection, collector's ticket included;
Ex Richard B. Witschonke Collection, collector's annotated coin-envelope included;
Ex Numismatica Ars Classica AG, Auction 61, 5 October 2011, lot 643;
Privately purchased from Tom Cederlind, April 1994.
"Victory is crowning a spearhead; she is putting a clearly defined small wreath, with tassles, on the speahead's point. So it is really a small version of Victory crowning a military trophy, a common type on Republican coins, but perhaps the economy version! This coin is an overstrike; overstrikes are rare after the second Punic war period. See Andrew McCabe, Roman over Roman Overstrikes in the Later Roman Republic, in Revue Belge de Numismatique CLXIV, 2018, p.79-96 for an inventory of the few then known to me. It does not include this coin as I had been unable to determine the undertype; the number of straight blocks and lines before the obverse face indicates the overstrike is probably on a prow bronze, obverse over reverse. The undertype elements do not correspond to the reverse of this coin so it is not a flip-over double strike. With a weight of 8.16 grams, most likely the undertype is a post-semilibral uncia. Worth further study." - Andrew McCabe.