Extremely Rare Issue

439, Lot: 10. Estimate $200. Sold for $600. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

WESTERN BLACK SEA REGION, Uncertain. Circa 250-140s BC. AR Tetradrachm (28mm, 16.61 g, 12h). In the name and types of Alexander III of Macedon. Head of Herakles right, wearing lion skin / Zeus Aëtophoros seated left; grapes in left field, monogram in exergue. Price –; Terzian 11 corr. (monogram and attribution); cf. HGC 3, 1770 (Dionysopolis). VF, lightly toned. Extremely rare, only one other published (in the ANS, see below).

Terzian placed the issue with this monogram as being at a mint whose attribution to the Black Sea region was “speculative,” but he failed to notice that his coin 12 (= ANS 1944.100.36010) was struck from the same obverse die as his number 8 (= Triton XVII, lot 86) and 12 coins (in Commerce), the former of which he placed under “Uncertain Black Sea mint.” He also did not notice that this obverse die must have been engraved by the same hand that crafted Karayotov’s obverse die 2 at Mesambria, which assures us that the mint of this issue was in the western Black Sea region.