Sale: Triton IX, Lot: 457. Estimate $15000.  Closing Date: Monday, 9 January 2006.  Sold For $50000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

BOIOTIA, Thebes. Circa 405-395 BC. AR Stater (11.91 g). Boiotian shield / Facing head of bearded Dionysos three-quarter face right, wearing ivy wreath; Q-E across lower field; all within concave incuse. Head, Boeotia p. 41 = BMC p. 79, 104, pl. XIV, 9; Myron Hoard pl. G, 5 (same dies); Jameson 1164 (same rev. die). Good VF, attractive old cabinet tone, traces of find patina in the shield's devices. Exquisitely styled facing head of Dionysos. Very Rare. ($15,000)

Ex Leu 30 (28 April 1982), lot 113 (CHF 74,000 hammer).

For one of the several existing forgeries made from casting this piece see (a) Naville-Ars Classica X (15 January 1925), lot 551 (10.43 g; sold for 100 Swiss Francs) and (b) R. Ratto, 4 April 1927, lot 1288 (10.41 g; sold for 255 Swiss Francs). Obviously (a) and (b) are one and the same coin; this is confirmed if the photographs in these auction catalogues are carefully compared. In our coin we have a case of "La Madre", as the Italian forgers say, appearing to be sold for the first time in 1982, a long time after one of its (disreputable) children was "sold" twice in reputable Swiss auctions. See also The Frederick M. Watkins Collection, an exhibition catalogue published in 1973 by the Fogg Art Museum in Harvard, p. 129, no. 86 (10.69 g) for another of these forgeries, which in fact is hinted at on page 8 of the catalogue. In this writer's opinion it is worthwhile to quote from this part of the catalogue which is a eulogy for the collector by George M. A. Hanfmann, the Museum's Curator of Ancient Art at the time: "He was the only collector I have known whose choices were faulted rather than aided by advice and advisors. Essentially, his own decisions were the ones that were right. A collector, like a saint, requires good deeds; like a saint, no collector is exempt from sin....Among his ... acquisitions, there is one which was strongly approved by his advisors, but has since been questioned as possibly a clever modern cast after an ancient piece." Perhaps this quotation will also serve as a reminder to today's young collectors that the "pleasure factor" in collecting increases with building up one's own knowledge and experience to the stage where "advisors" are no longer necessary.