Discovery Coin from Kritt’s ‘Mint C’

400, Lot: 314. Estimate $300. Sold for $1800. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

SELEUKID EMPIRE. Antiochos I Soter. 281-261 BC. AR Diobol (12mm, 1.15 g, 6h). Uncertain Mint 26, associated with Aï Khanoum (Kritt’s ‘Mint C’). Struck circa 281 BC. Diademed and horned head of Seleukos I right / Horned and bridled head of horse right; monogram within circle to right. Cf. SC 472 for type; cf. HGC 9, 135 for type. Near VF, toned, small edge chips. Extremely rare, a new denomination for the type.

This discovery coin further corroborates Brian Kritt’s theory that an Ekbatana magistrate (see SC 807b for a subsidiary monogram from Ekbatana very similar to the monogram on this coin) participated “in the coinages of the new Bactrian mints: At Aï Khanoum for the Seleucus I transitional drachms; at Mint C at the beginning of the reign of Antiochus I...” (The Seleucid Mint of Aï Khanoum by Brian Kritt, Classical Numismatic Studies No. 9, 2016, pp. 26-7).