Eid Mar Coin

Eid Mar Coin

In 2020, the London-based auction house Roma Numismatics sold the Eid Mar coin, a Roman gold coin commemorating the assassination of Julius Caesar, for a record GBP 3,200,000.

The coin is considered one of the finest ancient coins ever found. There are several silver versions of Eid Mar coins, but those struck in gold are much rarer. This particular gold aureus was allegedly discovered no more than a decade ago in an area of current-day Greece, where Brutus was encamped with his army after the assassination of Caesar.

Richard Beale, the then-director of the auction house, was apprehended in the United States in January 2023 for allegedly having falsified the provenances of the Eid Mar coin and several others. Beale was also accused of separately purchasing five other coins looted from the Gaza Strip in 2017 from a convicted antiquity trafficker. He allegedly sold these through Roma Numismatics with falsified provenance.

Beale had acquired the Eid Mar coin in 2013 from Italian dealer Italo Vecchi and allegedly also paid for the false ownership documents. In fact, the coin was shipped to the United States twice in 2020 accompanied by customs declarations stating that it was from either Türkiye or Italy.

This Eid Mar coin was purchased at auction in 2020 by an unidentified American billionaire. After Beale's arrest, the undisclosed buyer cooperated with HSI-NY and the Manhattan District Attorney's Office and handed the coin to American authorities, who returned it to Greece in early 2023.

Beale's 2023 criminal indictment cited the sale of the Eid Mar coin and second coin, the Sicily Naxos, and stated that Beale and Vecchi had intentionally "deceived potential buyers by creating false provenance" for the objects by claiming that they came “from the collection of the Baron Dominique de Chambrier.”

1

Currency

Roman

Roma Numismatics Limited

Unidentified American billionaire

Greece

Jason Felch

VG

Damien Huffer