313, Lot: 69. Estimate $100. Sold for $60. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

CARIA, Stratonikeia. Circa 88-85 BC. AR Hemidrachm (11mm, 1.36 g, 12h). Contemporary imitation. Laureate head of Zeus(?) right / Eagle standing facing, wings displayed, within incuse square. Cf. Meadows Group 3, especially 11-2. Near VF, dark find patina, porous.

Meadows’s group 3 hemidrachms depict a head of Zeus on the obverse, always with full beard, and normally include the name of a magistrate on the reverse. This coin seems to lack Zeus’s beard, and otherwise the style is rather crude. Additionally, the dies were not known to Meadows, whose study appears exhaustive. Thus the present coin seems to be a contemporary imitation copying the unsigned hemidrachms of group 3.