Tuesday 14 March 2017

The Galba aureus in Wakefield museum


A chance visit to a charity shop yesterday threw up a interesting batch of postcards, all unused and the same design and useful to use as notelets to numismatic friends. The batch of thirty or so cards bore an image of an aureus of Galba currently in the collection of Wakefield Museums. It inspired me to do a bit of digging about this coin and how it came to the museum.

Sadly there is very little online, apparently found by a metal detectorist working in the vicinity of Castleford (Roman Lagentium, thought to mean 'The Place of the Swordsmen') during road construction work in the centre of what was the Roman fort.


Most of the information gleaned came from Bland and Loriot’s monograph on Roman gold coins found in Britain. In that work it is entry number 646.

It is interesting to note that although the coin was found in 1979 it was not able to be included in the 1984 significant revision of Roman Imperial Coinage volume 1 where the type (obverse legend 5c, bust G (laureate, right) was only recorded as a denarius, the recorded aurei with obverse legend 5c being paired with a left facing laureate bust or a right facing laureate and draped bust: