Æ28 - Valerian and Gallienus ϹΑΜΙΩΝ

Samos issued bronze coinage under the joint reign of Valerian I and Gallienus during a period of acute imperial stress — the very years that saw Valerian captured by Shapur I at the Battle of Edessa in 260 AD, the only Roman emperor taken prisoner by a foreign enemy. Provincial mints across Asia Minor continued striking civic bronzes through this crisis largely uninterrupted, a bureaucratic inertia that makes precise dating within the 253–260 window difficult without specific magistrate names on the die.