Sale: CNG 63, Lot: 377. Estimate $4000.  Closing Date: Wednesday, 21 May 2003.  Sold For $4000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

ELIS, Olympia. Circa 421-385 BC. AR Stater (11.98 gm). Head of Hera right, HPA on stephane / F-A flanking thunderbolt within wreath. Seltman, Olympia 251 (dies EC/hh); SNG Fitzwilliam 3707 (same dies); cf. SNG Copenhagen 380. Toned, good VF. Rare. ($4000)

"The beautiful silver coins of Elis… form a series which, for the variety of treatment and the high artistic ability which it displays, is excelled by no other class of coins in European Greece." Barclay V. Head, Historia Nummorum.

Elis was the site of the Olympic games, held every four years, the most important pan-Hellenic festival of athletics and the arts. Olympia itself was less of a city than a sanctuary to Zeus, supreme god of the Greek pantheon, which had all the necessary stadiums, arenas, and housing facilities to handle the quadennial influx of athletes, spectators, and tourists. The coins of Olympia were struck only while the Games were in progress, at four-year intervals, forming a series that starts with the Olympiad of 471 BC and stretches, with a few interruptions, to the mid-second century BC. Since the coins were intended to be souvenirs of the Games as well as a medium of exchange, they were engraved and struck to the highest artistic standards of the time, as demonstrated by the refined head of Hera, consort of Zeus, and the fierce eagle displayed on this piece. The coins of Olympia therefore combine historical importance and artistry in a unique way.