Thessalian Countermarked Issues

Triton XIX, Lot: 112. Estimate $750. Sold for $2250. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

THESSALY, Lot of 17 countermarked bronzes. Includes the following: a variety of Thessalian civic and league issues, as well as a couple of Macedonian civic issues, each bearing a countermark of an owl standing right, a grain ear, or both. Countermarks are mostly VF, host coins average Near Fine. Seventeen (17) coins in lot. LOT SOLD AS IS, NO RETURNS.

From the BCD Collection.

BCD comments: If the average wear of the Thessalian Confederacy Apollo/Athena Itonia bronzes is taken into account, one could hypothesize a time for these countermark applications during the late first or early second century AD. However, it is interesting to observe that one of these pieces has seen much less wear than all the others of the same type (a point to remember when a solitary coin of a particular type in a hoard provides a convenient date for the concealment of the entire hoard). Two more observations are worth recording: the civic coins, as a whole (including Amphipolis and Pella, the only non Thessalian mints), are generally better preserved than the Confederacy bronzes. It is generally assumed that the civic bronzes were minted before the Confederacy issues, although recent research suggests that the two types of coins were almost contemporary. Nevertheless, it would be safe to say that, for almost the same period of time, the latter saw much more circulation and handling than the former. Also, at least one of the coins that bear both countermarks clearly shows that the “owls” were applied after the “wheat ears”.”

We know that in AD 99, Trajan ordered that grain be sent from Rome to Egypt. It could well be that during that time a compulsory grain donation was enforced on some Thessalian farmsteads that showed a surplus for the season. This would be a convenient way for the local officials to obtain the emperor’s favor at no cost to themselves. A practically valueless piece of metal countermarked with a wheat ear would be exchanged with a specific quantity of grain delivered for export. If this was a promise to pay the bearer some real money in the future, it probably never materialized. The owl countermarks, either on their own or applied in addition to the wheat ear are harder to explain. Probably a “second round” of donations that, for some reason, had to be recorded separately from the first. ASW has suggested a quantity of livestock such as a number of live chickens, but this seems a little far-fetched.