Triton XV, Lot: 609. Estimate $150. Sold for $1600. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

THESSALY, Pharkadon. Last quarter of the 5th to 1st quarter of the 4th centuries BC. AR Hemiobol (9mm, 0.48 g, 3h). Bull’s head and neck three quarter facing r., border of dots / ΦA above, ram standing l., in shallow incuse square. Traité IV, 567, pl. CCXCII, 15. VF, lightly toned; minor peripheral pitting and marks, an attractive and well struck coin.

The fact that seven different Pharkadon hemiobols are offered here does not mean that they are common. They may now appear more frequently than during the last century but this is happening with the majority of fractional Greek coins, a fact that becomes more and more obvious with the passage of time. If nothing else, this new state of affairs has allowed us to doubt statements like Kraay’s “there was nothing like a universal and continuous supply of fractional denominations” in Archaic and Classical Greek Coins, p. 318.