Sole Example in Private Hands

Sale: Triton X, Lot: 274. Estimate $7500.  Closing Date: Monday, 8 January 2007.  Sold For $7750. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

MYSIA, Parion. Circa 165-143 BC. AR Tetradrachm (16.88 g, 11h). Head of Apollo right, wearing laurel wreath / PARIANWN, Apollo Aktaios standing left, holding laurel branch in right hand, resting left on bow; two monograms to inner left, APOLLWNOS AKTAIOU around. Cf. Meadows, Parion, group 1, 1-2 (with altar on reverse and different monograms), otherwise unpublished. EF, lightly toned, minor die wear. Extremely rare type, this the sole example without altar, and the sole example not in a museum collection.

From the Richard Winokur Collection. Ex Gemini I (11 January 2005), lot 152.

These late civic tetradrachms of Parion are known from only a handful of coins, all in museum collections. While our variety, without an altar on the reverse to the left of Apollo, is unpublished, it shares a monogram with Meadows’ coin 1, and may share the same obverse die of his coin 2. The overall characteristics of the flan and style are also consistent among these three coins, indicating a single brief issue.