I find the styles of official and unofficial Athena / Owl tetradrachms to be very confusing but I decided to add this one to my collection. With the help of Altamura over at Forvm I discovered this is an Athens mint tetradrachm recycled on an older tet that was heated and folded twice to create a new misshapen flan. Athens, Greece, Pi-Style III Tetradrachm, 353 - c. 340 B.C Silver tetradrachm, 17.1g, Athens mint, oval flan, typical of the type. O: Head of Athena right with eye seen in true profile, wearing crested helmet ornamented with three olive leaves and pi-style floral scroll, pellet in ear. R: Owl standing right, head facing, to right AΘE in large lettering, to left olive sprig and crescent, pellet over eyes. - Kroll Pi-Style p. 244, fig. 8; Flament p. 126, 3; SNG Cop 63; SNG Munchen 96; SNG Delepierre 1479; Svoronos Athens pl. 20: 2 Unlike the customary flans of 5th and earlier 4th century Athenian tetradrachms that have solid, rounded edges from having been cast in a mold, these were struck on thick planchets made of flattened, folded-over, older tetradrachms. The flattened coins were not just folded in two but were folded over a second time to produce a planchet of three or four layers There are three distinct features of this type of Athens Owl coinage. 1st, they have flans that are commonly misshapen. A number of them are so distorted that numismatists and collectors in Greece have long referred to them as “logs” (koutsoura); these are the tetradrachms in the form of long, stretched ovals with one or two nearly straight sides. 2nd, since the flans, of whatever shape, were ordinarily too small for the full relief designs of the dies, relatively few pi-style coins were minted with their entire obverse and/or reverse type showing. 3rd, just as the diameters and surface areas of the pi flans are generally smaller than those of Athenian tetradrachms of the 5th century and of the first half of the 4th century, they tend also to be exceptionally thick. The name Pi-style refers to the floral helmet ornament on the obverse which resembles the Greek letter pi (P) bisected by a long central tendril.
Good to know & thanks for the post. Here is my Athens tet. It is quite thick on one side & was probably struck on a normal planchet. Owls are cool.
Very nice. You think mine could be a folded example? Look at the edges... Attica Athens AR Tetradrachm (22mm, 17.10 g) Athens Mint, 4rth Century BCE Helmeted head of Athena, r. Owl standing r., head facing, olive sprig and crescent to l; AOE in r. field. SNG Copenhagen 63ff. It is super thick and it always had a bit of a layered appearance to me. What do you think about it?
As I mentioned above, I know very, very little about this type. However, I think it is a folded flan from the appearance and based on the location of the ethnic. Here is a quote from Kroll's article, and a link, on the type: "Although they have always been visible—hiding, in effect, in plain sight—the two diagnostic features of the pi tetradrachms that lead to a solution have been noticed only in the past few years. The first of these is the changed position of the alpha on the coins’ reverses. On all earlier owl tetradrachms (Figs. 2, 4) the ΑΘΕ ethnic begins higher, at the side of the owl’s head, with the alpha’s left diagonal touching the head at eye level. On the pi-style owls, the alpha is positioned below the head, its left diagonal wedged in the notch where the head meets the body,15 thus permitting every pi-style tetradrachm to be distinguished from earlier specimens of the same denomination instantaneously." http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/pdf/uploads/hesperia/hesperia.80.2.0229.pdf
After carefully reading the article, I have no doubt that my Athenian tetradrachm was a re-cast using a folded flan. Not only does the position of the AOE offer proof, but it also accounts for the somewhat oval irregular shape of the flan (most obvious when looking at the obverse), and also explains the irregular edges...which I noticed from when I first got the coin that they looked as if someone had folded the flan on itself (and finally thanks to your article I can now confirm that to be the case.) What that means is that my Tet started life at an earlier point in time...perhaps as far back as Athen's Golden Age, only to be re-cast around 354BCE by having the flan folded over. Interesting!
Well, now, that's interesting. I find I like the Pi-style portraits the most, for some reason. The bug- almond-eyed archaic style just doesn't appeal to me as much aesthetically, though it's historically interesting. Nice toning on the OP coin, too.
No pic of the edge, but in hand, it's folded over and matches some of the samples in the pdf. Attica, Athens (353 - 294 B.C) AR Tetradrachm O: Helmeted head of Athena right R: AΘE Owl standing right, head facing, olive sprig and crescent to left; all within incuse square. 16.59g 21 mm Kroll -; HGC 4, 1599 Ex. Numismatik-Naumann, Auction 52, Lot 126
Could be ... could be! But considering I just learned of the existence of folded flans this very afternoon, you'd best not listen to me. (Sweet coin, BTW)
From the article referenced above: "not only are the flans commonly misshapen, but a number of them are so distorted that numismatists and coin collectors in Greece have long referred to them as “logs” (koutsoura); these are the tetradrachms in the form of long, stretched ovals with one or two nearly straight sides" Attica, Athens (353-294 B.C) AR Tetradrachm Obv: Helmeted head of Athena right Rev: AΘE Owl standing right, head facing, olive sprig and crescent to left; all within incuse square. 17x28mm 17.0g
