Triton XVIII, Lot: 317. Estimate $2000. Sold for $6000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

CALABRIA, Tarentum. Circa 280-228 BC. Lot of four (4) AR diobols. All coins: Head of Athena right, wearing crested Attic helmet / Herakles standing, strangling the Nemean lion with both arms. HN Italy 1061. Includes the following varieties: (a) (9mm, 1.14 g, 12h) Athena with plain helmet; on reverse, club to left, owl between legs of Herakles. Vlasto 1405; SNG ANS – // (b) (12mm, 1.26 g, 9h) Helmet of Athena adorned with hippocamp; on reverse, owl to left, Z between legs of Herakles. Vlasto 1399; SNG ANS 1450–1 // (c) (11mm, 1.08 g, 5h) Same as last // (d) (11mm, 1.25 g, 3h) Athena wears single-pendant earring, helmet adorned with three pellets on bowl and Z on neck guard; on reverse, aphlaston to left. Vlasto 1376–80; SNG ANS –. Lot also includes a small bronze box, 53mm wide, 42mm in depth, 28mm high, dating to late 4th century BC. The bottom part stands on four legs outlined by vertical lines engraved on the body surface, thus delineating the two ends of the box and its front and back. The sides and back are further decorated by two parallel horizontal engraved lines approximately one third up from the bottom. The lid, detached, has a rolled hinge and a flat top with remains of solder, presumably for attaching a decorative repoussé relief now lost. Cf. M. True and K. Hamma, eds., A Passion for Antiquities. Ancient Art from the Collection of Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman (Malibu, 1994), 29, for a very similar box, slightly larger and with its original repoussé decoration intact. All coins in Near EF condition, with underlying luster, typically a little off center on compact flans. The box has been professionally cleaned and restored.

From the collection of the MoneyMuseum, Zurich. Ex Nomos 1 (6 May 2009), lot 6.

From the Nomos catalog: According to the information that was supplied by Dr. Leo Mildenberg, this box was found in a river and when the deposits that filled it were cleaned out, these four silver coins were found within it. This is by no means improbable: the box itself is probably slightly earlier than the coins, but the idea that it contained them seems perfectly reasonable. Its small size implies it was meant to be used to hold relatively precious items. Given the kind of people who still brought things to Dr. Mildenberg in his later years, and this was brought to him a year or two before he died, it is very unlikely that anyone would have thought it worth while to create a fictitious history for the object (especially since the coins themselves were then of relatively minor value). It was undoubtedly shown to him because it was the kind of curiosity everyone knew he enjoyed seeing. In any event, being able to have the actual container in which the present coins were found is both exciting and romantic. The box is so close in form to the Fleischman example, now Getty 96.AC 87 (dated to 350-310 BC), that one wonders whether it could have been made in the same atelier. While its cataloguers pointed out its resemblance to the cinerary urns used in Macedonian tombs (especially that of Philip II), the fact that this one surely came from Magna Graecia makes one wonder whether the Fleischman piece came from there as well.