Sale: Nomos 1, Lot: 63. Estimate CHF60000.  Closing Date: Tuesday, 5 May 2009.  Sold For CHF52000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

BOEOTIA, Thebes. Circa 395 BC. Hemidrachm (Electrum, 3.04 g 4). Head of Dionysos to right, bearded and wearing ivy wreath Rev. ΘΕ The infant Herakles seated facing, strangling two serpents. BCD Boiotia 470. BMC 89. Jameson 2063. Kunstfreund 198 (this coin). SNG Copenhagen 302. Extremely rare. A lovely example with a particularly fine head of Dionysos. Uncleaned with deposits as found, otherwise, good very fine.

From the collection of C. Gillet, ‘Kunstfreund’, Bank Leu/Münzen und Medaillen, 28 May 1974, 198.

Dionysos and Herakles were the patron gods of Thebes and this extremely rare coin bears them both. Thebes was the only city in Boeotia to issue coins in electrum: hemidrachms and trihemiobols, both of the same type (the smaller piece is so rare that only a single example has every appeared at public sale).