Antoninianus - Tetricus I NOBILITAS; Barbarous imitation

Barbarous radiates imitating Tetricus I flooded the northwestern provinces in the years following the Gallic Empire's collapse in 274 AD, when Aurelian's monetary reforms created an acute shortage of small change in Britain and northern Gaul. Local workshops — some little more than a smith with a pair of crude dies — churned out imitations that shrank in both size and silver content with each generation of copying, until pieces like this one bore only the faintest ancestral resemblance to the prototype. The NOBILITAS type was among the more commonly imitated reverses, which is precisely why so many barbarous versions survive.