The Colin E. Pitchfork Collection of the Coinage of Metapontion

Sale: CNG 82, Lot: 150. Estimate $300.  Closing Date: Wednesday, 16 September 2009.  Sold For $450. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

LUCANIA, Metapontion. Circa 540-510 BC. AR Nomos (7.84 g, 12h). Barley ear of eight grains / Incuse barley ear of eight grains. Noe 4 (same dies); HN Italy 1459; BMC 2 (same dies); McClean 896 (same dies). Fine, toned, areas of roughness on obverse. Rare, Noe lists 14 examples.

From the Colin E. Pitchfork Collection. Ex Noble 51 (3 July 1996), lot 1998.

Classical Numismatic Group is pleased to offer another selection of coinage from Magna Graecia from the Colin E. Pitchfork Collection. As with his Tarentine collection featured in CNG 81, this selection of the coinage of Metapontion contains a comprehensive variety from all periods, and contains many issues rarely seen at auction, as well as a number of coins pedigreed to important collections and sales. CNG will run a further selection of Colin’s Metapontion collection in Electronic Auction 219, opening 9 September and closing 30 September, on our website, www.cngcoins.com. Please note that all coins of Metapontion below are from the Pitchfork collection, except for lot 162.

Metapontion, originally named Sybaris, was an Achaian colony of very early foundation, though the precise details of its origin are shrouded in uncertainty. Following the destruction of its first foundation by the Samnites, it was refounded, as Metapontion, early in the 7th century BC by settlers under the leadership of Leukippos, who was thereafter revered as the city founder. The great prosperity of the city — attested by the extent of its archaic silver coinage commencing in the mid 6th century BC — was based on agriculture. Situated on the Gulf of Tarentum, Metapontion occupied a plain of extraordinary fertility watered by the rivers Bradanos and Kasuentos. Its standard coin type is an ear of barley, a tribute to the source of Metapontine wealth, and Demeter, the goddess of grain who is the city’s most revered diety. One of the city's most notable claims was that it was the burial-place of Pythagoras who had retired there and perished in a sedition.