Important Chronology at Tarsos

CNG 99, Lot: 81. Estimate $3000. Sold for $4500. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

KINGS of MACEDON. Antigonos I Monophthalmos. As Strategos of Asia, 320-306/5 BC, or king, 306/5-301 BC. AV Stater (16mm, 8.55 g, 7h). In the name and types of Philip II. Tarsos mint. Struck circa 316-301 BC. Head of Apollo right, wearing laurel wreath / Charioteer driving biga right; monogram and ΣT below. CNG 85, lot 301 (same dies), otherwise unpublished. EF, toned, tiny abrasion on jaw of Apollo. Extremely rare, the second known.

From the Jonathan K. Kern Collection.

This issue parallels the Alexander staters of Price 3801-2, and its recent discovery is important in that it restores the series Price 3796-3809 to the mint of Tarsos, as it is very unlikely that a posthumous Philip stater would be struck as far east as Karrhai. The restoration of this series fills an important gap of coinage at Tarsos, which certainly must have struck coinage between 317-301 BC, while the mint was controlled by Antigonos I. Interestingly, at the end of his die study on the Alexander type at Tarsos, Newell remarked that there must be many more Alexanders struck there after the reign of Philip III, a point that Price apparently missed, as he noted that the mint issued no Alexanders thereafter.