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Today I went to the Richmond VA coin show. Two of my favorite dealers skipped this show but will be in Baltimore next week. That meant I spent all my time and money at one dealer who did come and brought a collection of Greek silver he recently acquired. I found 12 coins that spoke to me including 10 that weighed a total of 1.88g. Did I mention that the collection was super small silver? One thing I have been unable to do when it comes to coin photography is to make a coin under 5mm across look impressive on a large computer screen. These coins will look more like they do in hand if you stand about ten feet from the computer screen.

The smallest of the group is 5mm and 0.10g from Phokaia. I am taking the seller's ID as correct but have not found a match online yet. I still have much looking to do. I have found a couple of the larger tetartemorion size but this appears to be a hemitartemorion or 1/192 stater. In all honesty, I have no idea what standard was intended here or what the original owner called this denomination. The obverse shows a gryphon head right. Detail could be better. The reverse is a four part incuse. There is a big difference in the details you can fit on a 5mm flan and a 7mm one. This ties for my smallest coin.

 

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My smallest is the 9.5mm Marcian that I posted the other day - I am finding it hard to comprehend a 5mm coin.. perhaps a photo with a modern penny or something to show scale? I don't know.
Fun to wonder how they were carried about - and what they could buy....
It's an amazing object...

 

How wonderfully miniscule! Can't wait to see the other 11.

CNG's sale records have five similar, but attributed to Teos. They reference Balcer's "The Early Coinage of Teos", which happens to be online. On page 37, he catalogs three types of that size, differentiated by the presence of 'knobs' on the obverse, and whether the griffin's tongue is straight or curved. I'm not sure what you'd call yours, but the reference also has plates that I haven't looked at. Apart from the catalog portion, the paper looks like it'll be an interesting read.

I have my little griffin from Teos down as a tetartemorion, but at 0.14g (and 5mm), it seems a tad light compared to others I've seen.

 

Thanks. I had no reason to accept Phokaia other than the dealer flip so will switch to Teos until I have better reason not to follow the CNG ID.

Those who were here the last time this subject cycled through might recall my photo on a Lincoln reverse of another 5mm coin. This sort of image is a lot of work aligning the parts of the memorial so I don't see doing it regularly. The photo was made for my page on Tiny Treasures:
http://www.forumancientcoins.com/dougsmith/tiny.html

 

The other little one is just a tad under 5mm but thicker so it weighs 0.11g raising the question of what defines the smallest coin. It is from Ephesos and suffered from surface issues more but it is my smallest coin struck with a reverse design. The others have incuse punch reverses. Here we have an eagle head backing up a bee. Dating from 550-500 BC it is a relatively more common coin in the next size up (tetartemorion or 1/96th stater). I would not have bought this one due to the condition but I have so few 1/192 staters that it made the cut.

 

Only one millimeter wider at 6mm but twice the weight at 0.20g is the same coin in tetartemorion size. All that extra acreage allowed a new feature: legends. On the reverse we see the first two letters of the city name Ephesos - EΦ.

I wonder if the man on the street was able to separate these denominations with ease or if that was part of the problem that led to bronze minor denominations.

 

Nice! The centering on that second one is perfect. Steve’s example was really tempting me last week, but I chose three others instead. Maybe I shouldn’t advertise it, but it’s too good to not share...

 

Yes, Steve's had better surfaces and he is selling it for a lot less than he paid.
https://www.cngcoins.com/Search.asp...1&SEARCH_IN_CONTAINER_TYPE_ID_4=1&VIEW_TYPE=0
I guess it comes down to the fact that I do not pay the level of premium for what is termed 'exceptional'. Mine was $75. The dealer who sold mine had a couple dozen really nice Athens tetradrachms from the recent hoard. He had two with absolutely full crests and bold strikes on good flans. For half that price, he had mostly full crests but equal otherwise. He will have no trouble selling all of his tetradrachms but even with fair prices may have trouble moving the little coins. The best of the common ones were still not mint state. They will not appeal to the folks happy to pay $2k for the better tetradrachms even if discounted heavily. Steve's coin is exceptional. My coin is mine. All is well.

 

The next of my new tiny silvers is a 6mm, 0.31g from Kolophon, Ionia, with a very archaic style head left. I bought it for the style of the portrait. Most I have seen of these are not quite so stylized. Like many of these coins, it has a dark 'find' patina and looks better in hand (meaning from a distance). I paid a very little more than it brought in a 2012 CNG sale so it was no bargain but it demonstrates the late 6th century style rather well.

 

Sounds like it was a fun show and your lucky day despite the absence of your favorite dealers.

Did he say whether the tiny treasures were all from one collector?

 

Very nice and interesting coins, and so tiny!

I was surprised how tiny they are when I got my first tetartemorion. Also 0,20g and 6mm like your coin (who knows from the same mint?)

Yes I was wondering the exact same, on the eye it is quite difficult to see the difference between a tetartemorion and a hemiobol or an obol with a trihemiobol.
Also, how did they carry such tiny coins without losing them? I remember I read somewhere that they put these tiny silver coins under their tongue to not loose them.

 

All great small AR fractions. I haven't looked yet but I wonder what the purchasing power of one of these tetartemorion's was. Could you send your kid to the market for a loaf of bread with one of these?

Here is one from Kyme (seller's pics).


Aeolis, Kyme
4 mm 0.19g
c 520 - 470 BC

 

Very nice coin and interesting question.

I got a book about ancient Greek coins and there is a page with some examples of purchasing power of the coins, here some examples I picked:

• Piece of boiled meat - 1 hemiobol
• Round of wine - 1 obol
• A healthy calf - 10 staters
• Wage of Athenian soldier per day - 4 obols
• Day's license to sell clothing at local market (in Magnesia) - 1 bronze
• Purchase of vineyard (in Tyre) - 500 drachms

 

I enjoy Tetartemorions, and there are some really cool ones that you all have posted. Here is one of mine:


Troas Assos 500-450 BCE AR Tetartemorion 6.4mm 0.21g Griffin springing right - Astragalos within incuse square Klein 475

 

I can imagine how easy it might have been to swallow one of these coins.

 

The reason we suspect they were carried in the mouth is a passage in a play by Aristophanes making fun of a man who got exited and swallowed his coins. Was the practice normal? IDK

 

Interesting timing on tiny greek silver. Two days ago I was going through an old lot of 24 greek silvers I bought a couple of years ago. For some reason I skipped over the tets and drachms and looked at the tiny ones. Surprisingly, I could easily id the tiniest one, (about 5-6mm). A friend of mine is a huge Thasos collector and gave a talk on them. This was was Thasos with 2 dolphins and clear lettering. If it weren't for his talk there is no way I would have id'ed it. The second smallest was also Thasos, satyr left but reminds you of the common satyr and nymph type. That one was about 7 mm.

That is the downfall for me of greek coins. Very tough id'ing them. I got lucky with those two.

 

I believe it is more than luck in some cases; it is sometimes almost a miracle. Nearly half of my new little Greeks have some question on the ID. Some are an uncertain city, some an uncertain denomination. You can choose to let that bother you or not. Larger coins are better documented in the literature partly because they are more common and were studied by previous generations who pretty much ignored the small things and studied the tetradrachms. Unfortunately, small coins are more likely to suffer from corrosion since a 1 mm pit is a tetradrachm hardly detracts but a 1 mm pit in a 5mm coin is humongous. I am able to ignore some of these problems to a greater degree than many people. I am more troubled by experts who publish their guesses as facts than not having all the answers.

I really like this one from the show group. It is attributed to an uncertain city in Caria. At 7mm and 0.13g it could be a hemitartemorion but I fail to find the type that small in the few resources I have checked so far. It came with three tickets from previous sales that did not agree on all details of date and denomination. One called it a hemiobol which is just wrong as I see it. I have my opinions, too, but they are just that. I consider it, pound for pound, one of my finer purchases. Of course it would take about 3500 of these to weigh a pound so that may be faint praise. The obverse shows two bull foreparts confronted making an X with their horns. Each bull contributes one foreleg and one horn to the design. The reverse has only one bull forepart so there is room for more detail like a single ear (or is that horn an edge view of the other ear???) and some back hair. Oddly, this bull has both forelegs. I would love to see any other specimens of this coin that anyone can find. I'd even like to see any of the ones double or quadruple this weight which are not exactly common.

 

I think I have a larger version of Doug's three bulls coin. This was from CNG Auction 385 Lot 243 if you want the complete attribution as they have it (they assigned it to Caria uncertain Mint "D"). It was described as a tetartemorion to the Milesian weight standard. From what I can see online the Milesian system was based on a stater weight of 14.10g, so a tetartemorion would be 1/96 of that or about 0.15g which does match up to the weight of Doug's coin.

However the classification of mine never made sense to me given its weight of 0.38g - I thought it might be 1/48 of a stater which would make it a trihemitetartemorion (or 3/8 of an obol). To be honest I liked it because it had three bulls on it.



6.5 mm 0.38g

 

Searching for "caria kayhan 968" in acsearch gives a variety of results. The weights are all over the place, as are the denomination names given. A few look like yours, with the legs and crossed horns, and others more like TTerrier's.