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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Gavin Richardson, post: 2840915, member: 83956&quot;][ATTACH=full]672067[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>So every once in a while I will post a coin on Facebook with a little write-up for nonspecialists. I got this one in this week from Sebastian Sondermann--a good first experience with this dealer. He has a number of South Petherton hoard coins offered very reasonably. It&#039;s my first hoard coin and first of the Gallic Empire. Pile on with your Postumi, or hoard coins, as you will. My FB write up is below.</p><p><br /></p><p>-----------------------------</p><p><br /></p><p>Most of the time a collector really has no idea where an ancient coin might have come from. Of course its mint city will usually be known, but how and where it circulated, and how it was rediscovered in the modern day are almost always unknowable. Unless, of course, one acquires a coin from a documented hoard. That’s what I received a few days ago: a coin of Postumus, from the South Petherton Hoard. </p><p><br /></p><p>Postumus is an interesting figure. In the third century, the Roman Empire was a mess–so much so that Postumus, the general over the Gallic legions, pretty much declared himself Emperor of Gaul, and of Germania, Britannia, and Hispania to boot. The “official” or central Roman Emperor, Gallienus, was so busy with Germanic barbarians and hostilities in the East that he had to ignore Postumus’s rebellion for a decade, 260-269 A.D., until Postumus himself was wacked by his own troops for forbidding their despoliation of a conquered city.</p><p><br /></p><p>By 274, the Roman Emperor Aurelian had conquered all usurpers and rebels, uniting the Empire once again. Probably in that year or shortly afterward, someone in Britannia buried 7,563 coins–773 being of Postumus. This is one of them. There the coins stayed until November 13th, 2013, when George Hughes went metal detecting in the village of South Petherton, Somerset, England, and found this hoard. But why were these coins buried in the first place? Was there strife in the region shortly after Aurelian’s reconquest that occasioned a fearful burial of wealth, and the owner did not live to retrieve them? The fact that most of the coins in this hoard were of debased metal from a breakaway province meant that the coins might not have held much value at the time, so perhaps the owner couldn’t do much with them but could not bear to melt them down or discard them in the moment. </p><p><br /></p><p>For whatever reason, this coin from the South Petherton Hoard is a material testament to a volatile period in Roman history, and a tangible connection to a day in 274 A.D. when an anxious Briton took an extreme measure to preserve some modicum of his wealth.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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