Æ27 - Philip I ΝΙΚΑΙΕΩΝ

Philip I came to power after the murder of Gordian III on campaign against Persia — a killing in which Philip himself was almost certainly complicit. His provincial bronze issues, struck across cities of Bithynia including Nicaea, represent one of the last sustained waves of Greek imperial coinage before the collapse of the civic bronze tradition in the 250s, when military crisis and monetary instability effectively ended municipally-issued coinage across Asia Minor.