Æ23 - Maximinus ΝΙΚΑΙΕΩΝ

Nicaea's civic bronze coinage under Maximinus Thrax reflects an awkward political reality: the city continued issuing coins in the name of an emperor who never visited the eastern provinces and whose reign ended when his own troops starved him out at Aquileia in 238. Provincial mints like Nicaea operated with considerable autonomy during this period, and the city's magistrates — whose names often appear on these bronzes — bore practical responsibility for the issues far more than the distant emperor whose portrait legitimized them.

Nicaea was one of the more prolific civic mints of Bithynia, locked in a long-running rivalry with Nicomedia over the title of provincial capital.