Sale: Triton IX, Lot: 156. Estimate $1000.  Closing Date: Monday, 9 January 2006.  Sold For $3250. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

BOIOTIA, Haliartos. Circa 475-450 BC. Lot of two AR. Both coins: Boiotian shield, rim divided into eight sections / Square incuse with anticlockwise mill-sail pattern; refined aspirate in centre. SNG Lockett 1720 (same rev. die). Varieties: (a) AR Stater (12.20 g) // (b) Half an AR Stater (7.54 g). Cut in ancient times. Both coins VF, even grey tone, the aspirate with a small digonal die-break. Two (2) coins in lot. ($1000)

(a) Ex Hess-Leu 31 (6 December 1966), lot 301; A. Rhousopoulos Collection (J. Hirsch XIII, 15 May 1905), lot 1709.

The cut stater, struck from the same reverse die as the full stater, may have been "halved" to serve as a drachm, a denomination that may have been in short supply at the time (perhaps reflected by the high rarity of such drachms today [see lot 168, below]). Although no copper core is visible in the cut, it is also possible that the coin was cut as a suspected forgery. We know that this sort of cleaving was carried out to expose forgeries, and that the process could fold a portion of the silver coating over the exposed core (in effect, hiding it). It does not appear that such "folding" occurred here, and the use of an official die also suggests that this is not a fourrée.