Attractive Thespiai Stater

Sale: Triton X, Lot: 226. Estimate $5000.  Closing Date: Monday, 8 January 2007.  Sold For $10000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

BOEOTIA, Thespiai. Early-mid 4th century BC. AR Stater (12.13 g). Boeotian shield / Head of Aphrodite Melainis right; below, small horizontal crescent facing downward; to right, vertical crescent facing left; QESP-IKON along lower edge; all within incuse circle. BCD Boiotia 605 (same dies); Head, Boeotia p. 56, pl. IV, 20 = BMC 9 (same dies); SNG Copenhagen -; Boston MFA Supp. 94 (same rev. die). Good VF, gray cabinet tone. Rare.

From the BCD Collection. Ex Spink Numismatic Circular LXXVII/10 (October 1969), no. 7174.

Contrary to the opinion expressed in pour Denyse, p. 54, para. 2, that the style of this coin is coarser and is therefore of a later date, the shape of the flan and the reverse concavity suggest an issue before that of the "delicate style" (BCD Boiotia 606). There may not be more than a few years between the two styles, though, because the distinctive shield shape of the “delicate style” coins argue for an issue which is contemporary to or just after the large bronzes struck on the occasion of the Peace of Antalkidas (see BCD Boiotia lots 242 and 307, with notes). Unless, of course, this coin belongs to an even earlier issue, minted during the Corinthian war, in which case, then, there is no reason for it to start as late as 387 BC.