Nicaea's civic bronze coinage under Gordian III belongs to the final flourishing of Greek imperial issues in Bithynia — the mint ceased production not long after his reign, as Gallienus ultimately curtailed provincial bronze striking across much of Asia Minor. The city had long leveraged its coinage as a vehicle for civic prestige, and the larger module issues from this period reflect genuine competition with neighboring Nicomedia for prominence within the province.
The VII.2#1890 reference places this within Waddington, Babelon, and Reinach's systematic corpus — a catalogue now well over a century old and increasingly supplemented by die studies that reveal just how small some of these Nicaean emission runs actually were.
Nicaea's civic bronze coinage under Gordian III belongs to the final flourishing of Greek imperial issues in Bithynia — the mint ceased production not long after his reign, as Gallienus ultimately curtailed provincial bronze striking across much of Asia Minor. The city had long leveraged its coinage as a vehicle for civic prestige, and the larger module issues from this period reflect genuine competition with neighboring Nicomedia for prominence within the province.
The VII.2#1890 reference places this within Waddington, Babelon, and Reinach's systematic corpus — a catalogue now well over a century old and increasingly supplemented by die studies that reveal just how small some of these Nicaean emission runs actually were.