Triton XVI, Lot: 516. Estimate $3000. Sold for $8500. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

PAMPHYLIA, Side. Circa 490-450 BC. Cut AR Stater (15mm, 8.82 g, 6h). Pomegranate; ΣIΔH (retrograde) to left / Raven standing right; NRBISBÆK (in Sidetic) around. A. Destrooper-Georgiades, “An Unusual Coin from Side” in NK 14 (1995), fig. 1 = D. Tsangari, Hellenic Coinage: The Alpha Bank Collection (Athens, 2007), 157 (same dies), otherwise unpublished. VF, toned, some light deposits. Extremely rare, apparently the second known (the other in the Alpha Bank Collection).

Ex Gemini III (9 January 2007), lot 210.

This rare coinage undoubtedly belongs at or near the beginning of coinage at the mint of Side. The dating of the early coinage of Side, however, is still questionable. Atlan favored a high chronology, beginning circa 490 BC, while Kraay and others favor a later dating, to the middle of the 5th century.