Friday 4 December 2020

Roman shipping tesserae from Ostia

 

My new ship tessera, Stannard 10.1

About twenty years ago I encountered my first two ship tesserae from Ostia in CNG sale 53, lots 1434-5. Shortly after that I acquired an example and, much to my later regret, sold it on. I have now had the pleasure of acquiring a new example, listed in the auction catalogue as being ex Italo Vecchi collection (although it may just be ex Italo Vecchi Ltd Nummorum Auctiones 15 (1999) sale ).

Looking through Neville Stannard's 2015 paper in Numismatic Chronicle, where he shows all the examples that he is aware of, my new specimen, Stannard 10.1, looks to be from the same die as the specimen that I had before, Stannard 10.5.

My original tessera, Stannard 10.5

Not only that it appears to be one of the ship tesserae that was illustrated in Ladich's Cronaca Numismatica paper (from 2006, not 2008 as stated in the Stannard paper?).

Ladich's illustrations, note the second one down, "NPV" in error