A Pair of Lampsakos Staters

CNG 87, Lot: 498. Estimate $20000. Sold for $22000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

MYSIA, Lampsakos. Circa 394-350 BC. AV Stater (17mm, 8.36 g, 12h). Head of female left, wearing single-pendant earring and necklace / Forepart of Pegasos flying right within shallow incuse square. Baldwin, Lampsakos 17 (unlisted dies); SNG von Aulock -; SNG France 1151; BMC 29 = GPCG 15; Boston MFA 1590. Near EF, test cut on edge. Good style and sharp details.

Ex Gorny & Mosch 151 (9 October 2006), lot 174.

Lampsakos depended upon the traffic between the Aegean and the Black Sea, and possessed an excellent harbor in a strategic position guarding the eastern entrance to the Hellespont opposite Gallipolis. The city was known to have existed under the name of Pityusa before it received colonists from the Ionian cities of Phocaea and Miletus (Strabo xiii, p. 589). In the sixth and fifth centuries Lampsakos passed successively under Lydian, Persian, Athenian, and Spartan control. Its tribute of twelve talents, as a member of the Delian League, and production of electrum staters in the fifth century, attest to its commercial wealth. Following the example and standard of the Persic daric, Lampsakos was the first Greek city to make regular issues of gold coinage, which enjoyed an international circulation from Sicily to the Black Sea. As at Kyzikos, the quality of engraving was very high, and types changed frequently: about forty types were produced in a period of about sixty years. Many of the types featured Chthonic deities, those whose powers came from the earth, such as Demeter and Dionysos.