Sale: Nomos 2, Lot: 97. Estimate CHF60000.  Closing Date: Monday, 17 May 2010.  Sold For CHF45000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

ARKADIA, Arkadian League. Megalopolis. Summer 363-Spring 362. Stater (Silver, 12.19 g 1). Laureate head of Zeus Lykaios to left. Rev. Youthful Pan, nude and with his head facing, seated to left on a rock that is covered by his mantle, holding lagobolon in his right hand and resting his left elbow on the rock; to left, Arkadian League monogram; at the foot of the rock, syrinx and, in small letters, ΟΛVΜ. BCD Peloponnesos 1511(same dies). Guerin 11 (dies 1/c). Traité III, 866, pl. CCXXIV, 2 (same dies). Very rare. With the usual die break on the obverse, otherwise, nearly extremely fine.

Ex Triton VIII, 11 January 2005, 329.

The staters of Megalopolis struck in the name of the Arkadian League are all very rare, indeed. About 33 examples are known (most in museums), struck from three obverse dies, of which this is the first in the series. The quality of the engraving is remarkable: it is certain that the artist who produced the dies for this coin also worked for Olympia and for Philip II. As noted in the BCD catalogue, the suggestion that the reverse die of the present coin was unknown to Guerin (in the Triton catalogue) is an error: Guerin’s plates were simply not clear enough to enable a firm identification to be made at that time.