Æ20 - Nero ΝΙΚΟ, ΜΗΤΡΟ

Nicomedia had served as the de facto capital of Bithynia since the Hellenistic period and retained fierce civic pride well into the Roman imperial age — including the right to issue local bronze coinage, a privilege not automatically extended to provincial cities. The abbreviated legends ΝΙΚΟ and ΜΗΤΡΟ compress an outsized claim: Nicomedia's insistence on its title as metropolis, a status it contested bitterly with Nicaea throughout the first and second centuries AD.

RPC I 2066 places this issue within Nero's reign after 63, following the great fire and the emperor's eastward political attentions. Provincial bronzes of this period are frequently underrepresented in major collections relative to their historical weight.