Remarkable Early Archaic Owl

Sale: CNG 82, Lot: 502. Estimate $10000.  Closing Date: Wednesday, 16 September 2009.  Sold For $17650. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

ATTICA, Athens. Circa 510-500/490 BC. AR Tetradrachm (16.92 g, 5h). Archaic head of Athena right, wearing crested Attic helmet and earring / Owl standing right, head facing; olive sprig behind; all within incuse square. Seltman group L, - (A-/P283 [unlisted obv. die]); Asyut group III; SNG Copenhagen -; SNG München -; Perkins 287 = Boston MFA 1060 (same rev. die). Good VF, typical die wear, a few light marks on obverse, shallow cut on reverse. Very rare early owl.

Recent hoard evidence has established that Seltman groups H and L are the earliest issues of the famous Athenian owls. This particular coin, from group L, is significant. Obviously, the obverse is exceptional for its nearly complete crest and perfect centering on the flan. Of particular note, there appears to be small linear devices above the visor that are not found on any other die in the series. Although the obverse brings a new die to the corpus, the reverse is known from a single specimen in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (Seltman 338). That coin was previously in the Catherine Perkins Collection, and also was in the collection of E.P. Warren, from whom Boston acquired the piece. A salient feature of the owl is the form of the feathers on its body. Typically, these are represented as large pellets, but here they appear as tiny pellets within a framework of polygons. Seltman’s corpus of dies shows only three reverses that have this characteristic: P248, in group H; and P283 and P290 in group L. The scant number of dies in these consecutive groups, as well as the unusual characteristic of style, suggest that these may all be from the hand of the same engraver.