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Auction: 23006 - The Official COINEX Auction at Spink
Lot: 24

Iron Age Britain, Atrebates and Regni, Tincomarus (25 BC - AD 10), 'Alfriston' Type, AV Stater, debased laureate head of Apollo right, rev. triple-tailed horse right, large wheel below, TINCo and carnyx above, [MA]-RVS and disjointed trefoil before forepart, [Median Spink XRF: ~ 50.285% Au; ~ 31.14% Cu; ~ 17.53% Ag], 5.439g [83.94grns], 8h ("Alfriston Find" No. 2 = IARCH-C86A7B = CCI 69.0146 = Charles Roach Smith, Collectanea Antiqua 1848, pp. 9-12 and Pl. VII, No. 3 = Charles Brooker Esq. = Lord Holmesdale, Sotheby's, 8-15 July 1850, lot 1 = BM 1850,0808.2 [Coll. 872] = BMC 761ff.; Evans 1-12; VA 363-1 [Atrebatic D]; Mack 94; "Alton / East Meon" [16 Recorded in BM]; ABC 1049; Spink 72), richer cabinet tone to obverse and handsome underlying lustre, some minor striking splits, otherwise an attractive good very fine, extremely rare, most of the two-dozen recorded subsequently impounded in Museum collections

Provenance

Believed to be a stray from the Alfriston 'Burnt House' Hoard (East Sussex), c. 1824



Spink XRF Analysis (Conducted 1 September 2023, Olympus VANTA Series L, from which the median reading is calculated):


Reading 1 (Obverse), 10 seconds:

Au - 48.99 (+/- 0.52)

Cu - 30.99 (+/- 0.46)

Ag - 18.50 (+/- 0.28)

Fe - 1.52 (+/- 0.20)




Reading 2 (Reverse), 10 seconds:

Au - 51.58 (+/- 0.53)

Cu - 31.29 (+/- 0.48)

Ag - 16.56 (+/- 0.28)

Fe - 0.57 (+/- 0.15)




This compelling gold Stater was struck by Tincomarus ‘Great in Peace’, son of the legendary King Commios of the Atrebates and supplicant of the Emperor Augustus (Res Gestae 32.1), perhaps even when Augustus was in Gaul. The obverse of the Alfriston stater is copied directly from the Commios Muzzles Stater (ABC 1022) see lot 23; both bear the same snake-head to the left of the crescentic eyebrows of the same hidden face; the reverse is derived from the Tincomarus Alton type (ABC 1052), “but the style is now wholly native” as Dr John Sills says. Of the 20 examples in the British Museum, no fewer than 16 came from the East Meon (‘Alton’) hoard, found at 11am, 17 March 1996.

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Sold for
£1,500

Starting price
£600