Æ30 - Gordian III P M S COL VIM, AN IIII

Viminacium's colonial era began in 239 AD under Gordian III, when the city received colonial status and simultaneously launched a local bronze coinage with its own regnal year count — AN I marking year one. The AN IIII designation here places this piece in the fourth year of that sequence, 242–243, a moment when Gordian was actively campaigning against Shapur I on the eastern frontier. That military pressure likely drove demand for bronze coinage in the Danubian provinces, keeping the Viminacium mint productive through successive annual issues.

The series ran uninterrupted through Philip I and beyond, making year-dated die studies unusually tractable for a provincial mint of this scale.