Sale: Triton IX, Lot: 163. Estimate $5000.  Closing Date: Monday, 9 January 2006.  Sold For $4250. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

BOIOTIA, Haliartos. Circa 400-375 BC. AR Stater (12.33 g, 4h). Boiotian shield, trident upward in centre / Poseidon, naked, advancing right, extending right hand and brandishing trident in his left; ARI-AR-T-I-O(N retrograde) clockwise around from lower left; all within concave circle. Pozzi 1378 = Pozzi (Boutin) 3193 (same dies). Near EF for issue, attractively toned, die shift and usual die break on reverse. An important and very rare coin. ($5000)

Ex Leu 15 (4 May 1976), lot 214; Hess-Leu 36 (17 April 1968), lot 193.

R. Ashton ("Pseudo-Rhodian drachms from central Greece," NumChron 1995, p. 17, note 32) agrees with Etienne and Knoepfler (Hyettos de Béotie, p. 222, note 773) that these staters should be dated to the mid-5th century BC. Nevertheless, this writer thinks that the circular concave reverse and the absence of even a trace of an incuse square argues decisively, at least as far as Boiotian coinages are concerned, for a date in the early part of the 4th century BC.