Valerian I

Lived from 199 CE to 260 or 264 CE

Valerian was Roman emperor from 253 to spring 260 AD. Valerian was proclaimed Augustus by his own troops following the death of Trebonianus Gallus. He was another one of the emperors whose legacy was that of fighting war after war during his reign. He was the first emperor who realized that the Empire was getting just too big and unwieldy to manage and granted co-emperor status to his son Gallienus so that he could focus wholeheartedly to the business of putting out the fires. More sensationally, he stands alone in the roster of Roman Emperors for having been kidnapped by a foreigner, in this case the Persian king Shapur. To add insult to injury, it was reported that after killing him he was stuffed and put on display in his palace!

Subject ID: 123679

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Lived from 199 CE to 260 or 264 CE

Valerian was Roman emperor from 253 to spring 260 AD. Valerian was proclaimed Augustus by his own troops following the death of Trebonianus Gallus. He was another one of the emperors whose legacy was that of fighting war after war during his reign. He was the first emperor who realized that the Empire was getting just too big and unwieldy to manage and granted co-emperor status to his son Gallienus so that he could focus wholeheartedly to the business of putting out the fires. More sensationally, he stands alone in the roster of Roman Emperors for having been kidnapped by a foreigner, in this case the Persian king Shapur. To add insult to injury, it was reported that after killing him he was stuffed and put on display in his palace!

Valerian, along with his family, are the last to make Antoniniani that can be called silver. By the mid-250’s there was so little silver in these pieces that they started falling apart soon after leaving the mint. Even those minted early in his reign were so debased that the coins were very delicate. Once they were lost in the ground they tended to lose much of the base metal making up the bulk of the coin leaving behind a spongy-looking mess. Look for these on Ebay and coin dealer’s “junk bins”.

The very earliest Ants, those from 253-255, can sometimes be found in “nice metal” and tend to be prized as portrait coins in collector sets.

By now true bronze coins are rare. The emperors were using that copper to make Antoniniani and, in effect, it was wasteful to make coins that were essentially just as expensive to make, if not more, but had a lower face value. Strangely, the Dupondius is the bigger casualty as it just simply vanishes. Bona fide coppers are struck with laureate portraits in roughly lighter and heavier versions which we take to mean they were nominally equivalent to the Sestertius and As, respectively. Another bizarre practice begins to emerge in that these coins along with having wildly fluctuating weights are also often found today misshapen and often of a “squarish” appearance. It’s unclear whether they were struck this way or it was just practice to chop off coin sides to make small small change.

Subject ID: 123679

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