Among the Finest Known

Triton XX, Lot: 86. Estimate $30000. Sold for $75000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

SKYTHIA, Olbia. Eminakos. Circa 440-437 BC. AR Stater (21mm, 11.87 g). Herakles, nude but for lion skin draped over his head and back, kneeling right, stringing bow with both hands; EMINAKO to right / Studded wheel with four spokes; four dolphins swimming counterclockwise around; all within incuse square. Karyshkovskij Group I, α; V&K pl. 85, 6; Anokhin 167; SNG BM Black Sea 358 corr. (legend) = G. F. Hill, “Greek coins acquired by the British Museum in 1925” in NC 1926, 2; SNG Pushkin 52; SNG Stancomb 342; Boston MFA Supp. 79 = Jameson 2536; Frolova & Abramzon 248; Gillet 861; Hermitage Sale I 139; Kunstfreund 46; Rosen 147; Traité IV 1771. EF, toned, very slight granularity in spots. Rare, and among the finest known (better than the Prospero piece, which realized $45,000).

Eminakos is known only from his coins. Most authors speculate that he was a local dynast based in Olbia, which is almost certainly the mint for this issue, as the types appear on other coins of Olbia and almost all examples known have been found in the vicinity of that city (see G. F. Hill, op cit, pp. 117–8). In his 1968 doctoral thesis, Karyshkovskij noted 21 known staters of this type, to which a few have been added over the past 48 years. It would seem, thus, that this is not an extremely rare coinage, but the vast majority are in public collections; they very rarely appear at auction – only two examples are in CoinArchives, sold in 2012 and 2014, over a decade after the previous example, the Kunstfreund specimen sold in Leu 76 in 1999.