Sale: Nomos 9, Lot: 179. Estimate CHF6500.  Closing Date: Monday, 20 October 2014.  Sold For CHF7750. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

KINGS of PARTHIA. Mithradates II, 121-91 BC. Tetradrachm (Silver, 30mm, 15.80 g 12), Seleukeia on the Tigris, 119-109. Diademed bust of Mithradates to left, wearing torc and elaborate robes. Rev. ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ ΜΕΓΑΛΟΥ ΑΡΣΑΚΟΥ ΕΠΙΦΑΝΟΥΣ Archer seated to right, holding bow; to right, palm branch; below, ΤΥ. BMFA 2217. Sellwood 24.4. Shore 67. An exceptional piece, unusually well struck and perfectly centered. Some minor flan faults, otherwise, virtually as struck.

From the Escalade Collection, Switzerland, previously in another Swiss collection, acquired prior to 2000.

The tetradrachm coinage of Mithradates II of Parthia has always been avidly collected, especially since the appearance of at least one very large hoard of them that was found during the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988). While most of the coins in that hoard were nice, very few of them were as perfectly struck and well preserved as this one