418, Lot: 275. Estimate $300. Sold for $700. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

IONIA, Miletos. Circa 190/70-165/50 BC. AR Tetradrachm (29.5mm, 16.81 g, 12h). In the name and types of Alexander III of Macedon. Head of Herakles right, wearing lion skin / Zeus Aëtophoros seated left; in left field, star above lion standing left, head right, above civic monogram; two monograms horizontally to inner right. Price 2209; Marcellesi 43. Good VF, toned, struck from worn obverse die. Extremely rare, only two in Pella, one in CoinArchives, but none with monograms in arranged as here; all from the same obverse die.

From the Colin E. Pitchfork Collection, purchased from Baldwin’s, 14 December 1997.

Price does not distinguish how the monograms are arranged in the right field, but many of the issues in this period have different means of displaying them. While this coin has the same monograms in the right field as Price 2209, all of the published examples feature the monograms engraved from the outside-in and go up the field. Here, though, the monograms are engraved from the inside-out, and run down the field.