Selections from the Staffieri Collection at Astarte

Astarte SA from Lugano, Switzerland, offer their Web Auction 2 featuring 482 lots and closing on Saturday, 9 December 2023, beginning at 16 CEST.

The first section of the sale starts with 339 lots of Greek, Roman and Byzantine coins, weights and seals. The sale features the Giovanni Maria Staffieri Collection “Numi plumbei antinoënsi”. These rare fifteen specimens of lead tesserae minted at Antinoë in memory of Antinous, the favourite of Emperor Hadrian who drowned in the Nile in October 130 AD, represent either the personal study material of the collector and researcher Giovanni Maria Staffieri or the topic of the lecture on the theme “Numi plumbei antinoënsi”, which he gave at the 16th International Numismatic Congress in Warsaw on 16 September 2022 and which will soon be published in its proceedings, where he solves the well-known enigma of the dates on the tesserae, in the sense that, they refer to the years of the “era of Antinoopolis” founded in 130 AD.

The second section of the sale offers 50 medieval and modern coins and medals from various states and the G. M. Staffieri Collection of 78 coins and medals from Mantua and the Gonzaga family. View some of the highlights of the sale: