Unpublished & Overstruck

CNG 97, Lot: 287. Estimate $750. Sold for $2000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

SELEUKID KINGS of SYRIA. Antiochos Hierax(?). Circa 242-227 BC. AR Tetradrachm (31mm, 15.47 g, 1h). Uncertain mint in Asia Minor. Male head right with youthful features, wearing diadem with ends falling straight and parallel / BAΣIΛEΩΣ ANTI-OXOY, Apollo Delphios seated left on omphalos, holding arrow and bow; no control marks. Unpublished. Good VF, lightly toned, light marks and scratches. Overstruck on type with Apollo standing left, leaning elbow on tripod (the legend BAΣIΛ and ΣE, along with Apollo’s head and the top of the tripod, are visible on reverse).

Given the visible portions of the legend, the undertype is most almost certainly a coin of Seleukos II (SC 931 has been reassigned to Seleukos II [see SC II p. 666, C931], and although SC 936 might belong to the time of Seleukos III, the traces of the right-side monogram on the undertype are not consistent with the monograms of that issue). The identification of the issuer as Antiochos Hierax is not certain, but seems most likely, as the coin portraiture of Antiochos III is well developed, and the portrait on the present coin does not fit in this scheme. If the coin is of Hierax, it may suggest that he had a program to recoin his rival Seleukos II’s coinage by overstriking it.