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Auction: 23004 - Ancient and British Coins - Featuring the 'White Rose' Collection
Lot: 382

Iron Age Britain, Dobunni, Comux (AD 20-45), AV Stater, simplistic tree, pellet at base, rev. COMVX inverted above triple-tailed horse right, wheel below, 5.40g [83.3grns], 3h (S Birch [NumChron, 1851], pp. 71-79, no. 13; Evans [1862], Pl. I, no. 5; BMC 1108-1110; Montagu I, 47; SCBI 20 [Mack], 262; VA 1092; ABC 2054; Spink 385), handsomely struck up on a rose-gold fabric, almost perfectly centered, almost extremely fine / a most pleasingly good very fine, extremely rare and demonstrably superior to the Hunterian (Coats) and Fitzwilliam (Montagu) examples and comparable with the 'discovery' Frome coin found in 1848 and now housed at the British Museum (BMC 1108; CCI 69.0089)

Provenance

Spink, by private treaty, 9 March 1954

SNC, August-September 1953, no. 21223 - extremely rare, E.F. - £77.10.0

Glendining, 23 June 1953, lot 1 - fine and very rare - £62.0.0 [Spink]



Sir John Evans writing in 1864 ('The Coins of the Ancient Britons Arranged and Described'), stated: 'The coin here engraved is in the British Museum, and was found near Frome, in Somersetshire (Archaeologia, vol. xxx, p. 189, pl. ix). I have two other specimens, one from the same neighbourhood, and the other from Bisley, near Stroud, Gloucestershire. A fourth, found at Churchill, on the western border of Oxfordshire, is in the collection of Captain Murchison. I am not aware of the existence of any other specimens, but the places where these were found are all within the district to which the coins would have been assigned from their type, had the places of their discovery not been known. As to the meaning of the word COMVX, I must confess myself entirely at a loss. I cannot however, accept Mr. Poste's conjecture that it designates the COM(munitas) VX(acona), or XV(ella), partly because I have yet to learn that Communitas or Commios, is ever found in the sense of a community or people on British coins.

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Sold for
£7,000

Starting price
£3500