Sale: Triton VI, Lot: 360. Estimate $30000.  Closing Date: Monday, 13 January 2003.  Sold For $25000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

IONIA, Phokaia(?). Circa 625-575 BC. EL Stater (16.47 gm). Head of a griffin right, tongue protruding from open jaws, knob on forehead and two tendrils curling over neck / Rough incuse square. Bodenstedt 1a=Robinson, Electrum pg. 589, 7=Sotheby's Hunt Sale I, lot 55 (listed as "unique"). The second specimen known, from a different pair of dies. Good VF, obverse die slightly worn. (See color enlargement on plate 4.) ($30,000) 

A bold example of representational art from the earliest phase of Greek coinage. The griffin head would suggest an attribution to the city of Teos, but metrology and stylistic considerations place it as the first emission from Phokaia, at the head of a long production sequence of electrum. There are now two examples of this stater known, as well as a still-unique stater in Munich with griffin head left and legend ZION.