345, Lot: 19. Estimate $200. Sold for $300. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

CRETE, Arkadia. Circa 300 BC. Æ (14.5mm, 3.03 g, 6h). Head of Zeus Ammon right / Athena standing facing, holding spear and resting hand on [shield set on ground]. Cf. Svoronos, Numismatique 1; SNG Copenhagen –; cf. Traeger 16a. Near Fine, brown patina, traces of green, minor roughness, weakly struck on obverse. Extremely rare and unpublished.

From the Colin E. Pitchfork Collection, purchased from Wayne Woolmer, 12 October 2012. Ex Spink Noble 34 (14 November 1990), lot 1748.

Svoronos p. 26 illustrated three specimens of this type in silver; pardoxically, a printer’s error in the plates of Svoronos (pl. II, 16, 17, 18) lists the three silver coins as Æ. However, G. F. Hill in his paper ‘Cretan coins from the Seager Collection’ (in S. Casson, ed., Essays in Aegean Archaeology presented to Sir Arthur Evans, p. 43) remarks that “Mr Seager also possessed two bronze coins with the same types (as the silver) hitherto not known in that metal.” The present bronze coin, then, appears to coincide with Seager’s two bronze coins.