A silver version of the coin was also minted and about 100 are known to exist. The British dealer who helped to arrange the sale was arrested in January, and the coin itself was recovered in February, officials said.Įxperts said the coin, minted two years after Caesar’s death, is about the size of a nickel and weighs about 8 grams, and is one of only three known to be in circulation. The coin, one of 29 artifacts returned to Greek officials, was given up earlier this year by an unidentified American billionaire who, investigators said, had bought it in good faith in 2020. Homeland Security Investigations, who cooperated on the case. The return Tuesday came at a ceremony attended by officials of the Manhattan district attorney’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit and U.S. According to historians and experts, Brutus had the coins minted in gold and silver to applaud Caesar’s downfall and to pay his soldiers during the civil war that followed the killing. The coin, valued at $4.2 million, features the face of Marcus Junius Brutus, the onetime friend and ally of Caesar who, along with other Roman senators, murdered him on the Ides of March in 44 B.C. “The Eid Mar is an undisputed masterpiece of ancient coinage,” Mark Salzberg, the chairman of Numismatic Guaranty Corp. That rare and ancient gold coin was returned this week to Greek officials by investigators in New York who had determined it was looted and fraudulently put up for sale at auction in 2020. What is less known is that Brutus later had a coin minted to celebrate the event.
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