Sale: Nomos 5, Lot: 194. Estimate CHF10000.  Closing Date: Monday, 24 October 2011.  Sold For CHF11000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

KINGS of LYDIA. Kroisos. Circa 560-546 BC. Stater (Gold, 8.07 g), light standard, c. 550-546, and later until c. 520. Foreparts of lion, on the left, and bull, on the right, facing each other. Rev. Two incuse squares of unequal size. BMFA 2073. Dewing 2431. SNG von Aulock 2875. SNG Berry 1138. Sharp and attractive. Extremely fine.

Ex Heidelberger Münzhandlung 50, 10 November 2008, 42.

The later Kroisids, staters of light weight (c. 8 versus c. 10 g for the heavier) were, apparently, the first imperial gold coinage produced by the Achaemenids after the conquest of Lydia (there is a possibility that the standard was, in fact, introduced by Kroisos himself late in his reign though most known coins are surely of Persian date). The types were retained because the coinage had already become well known and trusted over a fairly wide area, and because the lion and bull were symbols of power all over the East. In c. 520 the Persians decided to inaugurate a series of gold coins of the same weight but with the purely Persian type of the running royal archer; these were minted in enormous numbers and were the most important gold coin produced during the following centuries, until they were replaced by (and often melted down and made into) the new staters of Alexander and his successors.