I just bought a budget Colosseum Sestertius

Julius Germanicus · November 5, 2024

Inspired by the recent thread about the latest Colosseum Sestertius to hit the market, I decided to instead buy an affordable substitute at last months´ Noonans auction:

IMP CAES VESPASIAN AVG P M TR PPP COS VII – laureate bust of Vespasian right / Overhead view of the Flavian Amphitheatre from the south-east, containing imperial box, Meta Sudans to the left, column to the right

AE cast “Sestertius”, after Giovanni Cavino

23,07 g / 34,5 mm

Johnson & Martini 1564-74

The cast coins with Vespasian (or Titus, for that matter) on the obverse and the Colosseum and the Meta Sudans on the reverse certainly do not reproduce ancient originals since Vespasian never minted Sestertii with the depiction of the Colosseum, but are an invention of Giovanni Cavino (1500-1570) without any direct ancient model, combining an obverse of a Sestertius of Vespasian with the Colosseum reverse of the very desirable (and expensive, of course) pieces minted by Titus in 80-81 AD and Domitian on behalf of his deified brother Titus in 81 and 82 AD.

Cavino claimed to have seen originals in Fugger’s as well as Agustín’s collections.

Today there seem to be at least three versions of this type of cast.

The reverse of mine with a single column right of the theatre corresponds with a Paduan in the KHM Vienna (FA 3817) from what looks like (nearly) the same reverse die (note however the structure of the column):

Most other specimens (Johnson & Martini 1565, Klawans 6) however show not a single column, but part the of the portico of the Baths of Titus to the right of the Colosseum.

The Vienna Specimen also like my coin lists COS VII on the obverse (despite the obviously different obverse die) and not COS VIII like most other casts.

Please share your thoughts and/or show your budget Colosseum coins!