I saw this listing on ebay and while the reverse is not bad, the test cut on obverse really speaks for itself (Certainly not made by an Athenian I hope!).
The guy was probably tired of testing an enormous pile of tetradrachms one by one, he had to finish the job quickly and did care no more. Usually these test-cuts are done on the reverse.
Back then, it was the metal that most merchants were concerned about rather than the imagery. Philistines. That's an interesting countermark on the obverse of your coin, @GinoLR.
Philistines? You could not say it better. Test-cutting Attic tetradrachms was a current practice in 4th c. BC Philistian cities like Gaza, Ascalon, Raphia... It seems cut coins were accepted as well as intact ones. Maybe even better, because you could see there were solid silver. A hoard found in Rafah contained hundreds of imitative drachms and more than 350 Attic tetradrachms: approx. one half of the tetradrachms were defaced one may or another, with countermarks, punches, drills, test-cuts on the reverse or even on the obverse... Well... this was not only Philistian. The Attic owls of the so-called "1973 Iraq Hoard", allegedly found near Babylon, were even more defaced !
Overall, I believe more people avoided defacing the goddess than not. There are exceptions to every rule but that one is an extreme example. It is from the period when they were folding flans which would seem to, in itself, make it harder to conceal a core. I wonder what it was about that coin that caused it to get such treatment beyond the usual. 3 placed carefully one barely enough to mean anything A weak cut by the tail that raised suspicion followed by a severe on that proved the point
If it was, then the Athenians were perhaps less superstitious about their deities than I would have guessed.
Yeah with hacksilver they tended to go by weight. I know the Vikings at one point used the “Mark” of 200 grams of fine silver. “In the Laws of Canute an unknown man who was killed and was presumed to be a Dane, and the vill/tithing was compelled to pay 40 marks for his death.” But it was tough to find coins with a weight divisible by 200 so they could cut coins into pieces when adding another whole coin would’ve made it overweight. Not just coins either. They’d chop up religious ornaments made of precious metals too.
