450, Lot: 224. Estimate $100. Sold for $60. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

SELEUKIS and PIERIA, Apameia. 1st century BC. PB “Tetradrachm”(?) (25mm, 17.03 g, 11h). Dated SE 299 (14/3 BC). Laureate head of Zeus right / Nike advancing left, holding wreath; [AΠ]AME[ΩN] THΣ IEPAΣ KAI AΣYΛOY at sides, Θ(koppa)Σ (date) to inner left. Unpublished in the standard references. Tan patina. Good Fine. Rare and unusual.

Lead coins were issued in several areas of the ancient Greek world. Most prominent among the issuers are Alexander Jannaeus of Judaea and the rulers of the Nabataean kingdom. Yet unique lead objects from other areas are periodically seen as well, sometimes directly copying one or both sides of an official coin, sometimes bearing completely unknown fantasy types (for example, CNG 85, 330 and BCD Thessaly 1305). These enigmatic pieces are frequently identified as distribution tokens or entry tickets, an untenable attribution given the lack of precise provenance. Other possible uses for the objects abound, including: tokens, bullae, weights, contemporary or modern counterfeits, funerary money, test-pieces or strikes, and even circulating coinage. Of these suggestions, a use as a token or test-piece is often most likely. As tokens, the objects may have initially served as proof or guarantee of some sort. As test-pieces, the objects would have served to demonstrate coin designs for approval prior to mass striking, as pattern coins do in the modern world.