Extremely Rare Sparta Bronze
Missing from BCD

396, Lot: 180. Estimate $100. Sold for $950. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

LAKONIA, Lakedaimon (Sparta). Mid 1st century BC. Æ Dichalkon(?) (17mm, 3.50 g, 12h). Jugate heads of the Dioskouroi right; pellet border / Two amphorai entwined with serpents; Λ-A flanking; pellet border. CNG E-169, lot 33 (erroneously attributed to king Nabis), otherwise unpublished. Fine, dark green patina. Extremely rare, perhaps the second known, none in the BCD collection.

From the J. Cohen Collection. Ex VAuctions/Ancient Imports 310 (25 September 2014), lot 83.

This unpublished bronze issue of Lakedaimon is quite enigmatic. It is most similar to Grunauer’s Group XV dichalkoi, which have the same general types, but lack the serpents, have a chevron-barred A in the ethnic, a wreath surrounding the reverse type, and bear magistrates’ initials. The reverse type, with serpents around the amphorai, is a match with the reverses of Grunauer’s Group X hexachalkoi, but that issue, which also includes the contemporary Group XI tetrachalkoi, has the full ethnic, rather than the abbreviated version here. Nonetheless, the present coin likely belongs to a period relative to these succeeding Grunauer Groups, which places it sometime in the mid 1st century BC.