2000 year old Roman gold coin minted by Julius Caesar's assassin expected to fetch up to £5 million at auction in London.
The most famous and iconic of all Roman coins is expected to fetch a record-breaking sum when it is sold at auction in London later this month.
The EID MAR (Ides of March) coins struck by Marcus Junius Brutus, the most celebrated of the assassins of Julius Caesar, on the eve of the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC are considered unobtainable in silver by all but a fortunate few collectors, and the gold coin of the same design holds a near-mythical status as the ultimate rarity and 'holy grail' of ancient coin collecting. Only two others are known to exist – one on display at the British Museum, and the other in the permanent collection of the Deutsche Bundesbank – the central bank of the Federal Republic of Germany.
The coin was a naked and shameless celebration of the assassination of Julius Caesar two years earlier in 44 BC. The bloody assassination had been prompted by the well-founded belief among the Senate that Caesar indented to make himself king, which in truth he was already in all but name. On the one side we see the portrait of Brutus himself, and on the other we are presented with the murder weapons, the motive (namely to free the Republic from tyranny) represented by a ‘cap of liberty’, and the date of the deed – the 15th of March, known then as the ‘Ides of March’.
Richard Beale, managing director of the London-based auction house Roma Numismatics Limited said: “we are extremely privileged to bring this coin to auction with the invaluable assistance of Numismatic Guaranty Corporation (NGC), whose expert specialists have assisted in authenticating it. This is at once an incredible work of art and a physical part of one of the most famous and momentous events in all of human history”. Widely anticipated to smash its conservative pre-sale estimate of £500,000, the coin is expected to sell for well over double or triple its estimate and it may well become the most expensive Roman gold coin ever sold with at least one independent expert (Barry Murphy of NGC) suggesting it could sell for “3-5 million”.
NGC’s founder and chairman Mark Salzberg said “We’ve seen a lot of great Roman and Greek coins, but this is the highlight of all that we’ve graded. And the story behind it is remarkable. This coin is going to get a lot of recognition when it goes up for auction. It’s going to be kind of a worldwide event.”
The coin will be auctioned in London by Roma Numismatics Limited on 29 October 2020.