Sale: Triton VIII, Lot: 589. Estimate $3000.  Closing Date: Monday, 10 January 2005.  Sold For $3000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

PTOLEMAIC KINGS of EGYPT. Ptolemy V Epiphanes. 205-180 BC. AR Tetradrachm (14.17 gm, 12h). Struck circa 202-200 BC. Military mint in Phoenicia. Diademed bust of Ptolemy IV right / BASILEWS [PT]OLEMAIOU, eagle standing left on thunderbolt; Q to left, NI between legs. Svoronos -; Mørkholm, Portrait, Group IX, - (A13/R-; obverse die unlisted with this issue); BMC Ptolemies -; SNG Copenhagen -; Classical Numsimatic Group 38 (6-7 June 1996), lot 568 (same dies). Near EF, lightly toned, obverse a little off-center. Very rare. ($3000)

Ex Robert Schonwalter Collection (Triton V, 15-16 January 2002), lot 1541.

The portrait coinage of Ptolemy V is a distinctive series in an otherwise monotonous succession of increasingly stereotyped renditions of the features of the founder of the dynasty, Ptolemy I. Mørkholm argued that most, if not all, of these portrait types were struck in Phoenician mints, many of the types being die-linked with mint marked pieces from Sidon, and most of the hoards being found in that region. In addition, the interlinking of dies within each series points to a limited period of minting, perhaps for only a few years after 202 BC, when Ptolemy V was fighting a losing battle to keep his Phoenician territories from falling to Antiochos III of Syria. His portrait types, along with scarcer types showing his parents Ptolemy IV and Arsinoe III, lent immediacy to the Ptolemaic presence in Phoenicia. The portraits of Ptolemy's parents appear later in Mørkholm's sequence, beginning with issue XI. This pairing of die A13 (Ptolemy IV) with issue IX slightly adjusts his internal grouping of this series.