Sale: Triton IX, Lot: 110. Estimate $100.  Closing Date: Monday, 9 January 2006.  Sold For $60. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

BOIOTIA, Federal Coinage. Circa 225-171 BC. AR Drachm (4.11 g, 12h). Laureate head of Poseidon right, border of dots / Nike standing left, resting on trident and holding wreath; BOIWT[WN] downward on left; to inner left, dolphin downward. Head, Boeotia p. 90 corr. (Poseidon not Zeus); Agrinion 159 corr. (dolphin not cornucopia). Near Fine, even grey tone. ($100)

Margaret Thompson (Agrinion p. 13, 159) mistook the dolphin which is clear on this specimen for a cornucopia. But she also noticed the big difference in wear between early and late issues of this type in the hoard and suggested that the pieces with the trident symbol belong to the final period of this coinage. Nevertheless, the correct chronological order of the nearly forty different issues that exist can only be established with a die study; here the order is arbitrary and based only on stylistic criteria and fragmentary hoard information. It should also be made clear at this point that some monograms which appear different (and are here catalogued as such) were in fact meant to be the same at the time these coins were struck.