Sale: Triton IX, Lot: 949. Estimate $10000.  Closing Date: Monday, 9 January 2006.  Sold For $23000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

IONIA, Uncertain. Circa 650-600 BC. EL Stater (14.22 g). Milesian standard. Figural type. Sphinx seated left on ground line; cross with terminal pellets to left / Irregular incuse. Unpublished. Good VF. Unique. ($10,000)

This previously unknown type almost certainly has an Ionian origin, but the specific mint remains unknown. The sphinx appears as a civic emblem on archaic coins of both Chios and Samothrace, but Samothrace did not issue electrum, and the electrum staters of Chios, although struck on the same weight standard as the present coin, are of a distinctly different style (cf. Baldwin, Chios, pl. I, 1-12). The cross with terminal pellets -- perhaps a solar symbol – is exceptional by its appearance here as a subsidiary symbol. Such subsidiary symbols are rare on early electrum (but cf. Triton VIII, lots 399-405, for the use of a pentagram or a triad of pellets as symbols on the early electrum of Ephesos). The cross with terminal pellets does appear on other uncertain early electrum (cf. Traité I 7, pl. I, 6) and is employed regularly as a reverse type on the electrum of Miletos (with a central pellet in addition to the terminal pellets; cf. SNG Kayhan 440-449).