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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;zadie, post: 7997737, member: 114699&quot;]Hi all!</p><p><br /></p><p>I&#039;m looking for some advice regarding a recent acquisition I&#039;ve made. Ever since it arrived I&#039;ve been trying to puzzle together a proper attribution for it. </p><p>I like tetradrachms of Alexander and I like attributing them. This has lead me to start buying cheap, ugly and unremarkable alex tets whenever one shows up in my purview. As it did in this case.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1387328[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p style="text-align: center"><font size="3">Kings of Macedon. Alexander III (336-323 BC). AR Tetradrachm. Pella (?) Struck 285-275 BC. Head of Herakles right, wearing lionskin headdress / Zeus seated left, holding eagle and sceptre, ΑΛΕΞΑΝΔΡΟΥ. ΑΓ monogram beneath throne. 16.3 g, 27.4 mm. Price 550.</font></p> <p style="text-align: center"><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Attributing the coinage of Alexander, as with many other areas of ancient coins, is dependent on mint marks. On my coin, two monograms on the reverse are visible and they will (hopefully) lead us to an accurate attribution.</p><p><br /></p><p>Starting with the usual suspects, I tried matching the monograms with the catalogued symbols on Pella (<a href="http://numismatics.org/pella/symbols" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://numismatics.org/pella/symbols" rel="nofollow">http://numismatics.org/pella/symbols</a>). This yielded somewhat mixed results. </p><p><br /></p><p>Inspecting the left field monogram very closely, I was pretty sure it at least contained Π, A and P, but nothing came even close to matching what was on my coin.</p><p><br /></p><p>Identifying the monogram beneath the throne was luckily not as challenging. It being one of the better preserved parts of the coin helped much in this regard and I suppose since it&#039;s not a very intricate monogram that made it quite easy also. </p><p><br /></p><p>Looking through the listed types that contained the ΑΓ monogram I was able to find a great candidate in Price 550: <a href="http://numismatics.org/pella/id/price.550" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://numismatics.org/pella/id/price.550" rel="nofollow">http://numismatics.org/pella/id/price.550</a>. Besides having the monogram positions mixed up, it seemed to be very close to my coin. The only variation being the left field monogram. </p><p><br /></p><p>Looking a bit further I was able to find this example of Price 549 in the BM collection that is an obverse die match to my coin, confirming that at the very least my coin is a related issue:</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1387341[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p style="text-align: center"><font size="3">Kings of Macedon. Alexander III (336-323 BC). AR Tetradrachm. Pella (?) Struck 285-275 BC. Head of Herakles right, wearing lionskin headdress / Zeus seated left, holding eagle and sceptre, ΑΛΕΞΑΝΔΡΟΥ. Price 549.</font></p> <p style="text-align: center"><br /></p><p><font size="4">This type shares the exact same left field monogram that is seen on my example, containing Π, Α, Ρ, Δ, and Ν. Price however, listed 550 as only containing an Α, Ν, and Ρ monogram. This lead me to start thinking that either Price made a mistake when cataloguing the type, or my coin is an unrecorded variety of an already extremely rare type. </font></p><p><font size="4"><br /></font></p><p><font size="4">All that I needed now was a picture of another example of Price 550 to confirm my little hypothesis. Finding nothing in Pella I decided to scounder through acsearch for any sales record that might be available, but alas, nothing. </font></p><p><font size="4"><br /></font></p><p><font size="4">Consulting Price&#039;s actual book on the subject, The Coinage in the Name of Alexander the Great and Philip Arrhidaeus, I was saddened to see that my coin was not plated. He did however cite one example of the type belonging to the Munich state collection but no pictures seemingly exist online of it.</font></p><p><font size="4"><br /></font></p><p><font size="4">&nbsp;</font></p><p><font size="4">[ATTACH=full]1387343[/ATTACH] </font></p><p><font size="4"><br /></font></p><p><br /></p><p><font size="4">So... In conclusion. I seem to have stumbled across quite the rarity. Either that or I&#039;m missing something! Looking forward to any and all suggestions/thoughts on this.</font>[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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