Sale: Nomos 3 & 4, Lot: 1255. Estimate CHF200.  Closing Date: Monday, 9 May 2011.  Sold For CHF1900. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

THESSALY, Phalanna. First half of the 4th century BC. Lot of four bronze dichalkoi. . 1255.1 18 mm, 4.81 g, 12. Youthful male head to right, perhaps Peloros (?). Rev. ΦΑΛΑΝΝΑΙΩΝ Head of nymph to right. Papaevangelou-Genakos 6. Rogers 452. 1255.2 17 mm, 4.97 g 7. Male head as last. Rev. ΦΑ]ΛΑΝΝΑΙΩΝ Head of nymph as last. Papaevangelou-Genakos 6. Rogers 452. 1255.3 17 mm, 4.68 g 12. Male head as last. Rev. ΦΑΛΑΝΝΑΙΩΝ Head of nymph as last, but with Α behind head. Papaevangelou-Genakos 21 (this coin). 1255.4 16 mm, 5.69g 12. Male head as last. Rev. ΦΑΛΑΝΝΑΙΩΝ Head of nymph as last, but with Α behind head. Papaevangelou-Genakos 21 var. A very attractive group, all with fine patinas. Extremely fine (4).

A note from BCD: Rogers, p. 146, calls the type of Phalanna bronze offered in this lot “...the commonest of all Thessalian AE.” Things have not changed much since the early 1930s except that now some Krannon bronze types (see Rogers figs. 76, 77, 80 and 83) are also claiming this distinction. Once again, observations like this have to make us think about what rarity means in respect to the coinage of the ancient world. Why did some cities produce relatively small issues of bronze, perhaps struck by only a few die pairs, while others, as here, minted massive numbers, produced by very considerable numbers of dies? Coins may have been issued just for prestige, so that all citizens could use ‘their own’ money to buy things, while others must have been struck not only for local use, but also as the money of a whole region. The enormous coinage of Phalanna was probably used all over northern Thessaly, if not beyond.