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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;tenacious, post: 1968277, member: 14553&quot;]I was lucky to get this from Barry Murphy many years ago.</p><p><br /></p><p>Athens. Circa 506-480 BC. AR Tetradrachm (17.04 gm).</p><p>Archaic helmeted head of Athena right / Owl standing facing within incuse square. Seltman Group M; Svoronos pl. 5. VF. Scarce Archaic tetradrachm.</p><p><br /></p><p>This one has nice metal. The purity of the silver amazes me. I&#039;ve read they are 98% - 99% pure. The ore from the mines was very pure. There&#039;s a place on the side that was rubbed and it shines like new jewelry.&nbsp; But you can&#039;t tell from the original picture. I need to get new pics done.</p><p><br /></p><p><img src="http://i981.photobucket.com/albums/ae295/myimagesdigital/CoinTalk/506-480BC_zps2c823ad3.jpg~original" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>For those not familar with these and are wondering why it looks so funny, that was just the style at that time. Here is a kouros head dated to 540 BC:</p><p><br /></p><p><img src="http://i981.photobucket.com/albums/ae295/myimagesdigital/CoinTalk/KourosFace540BC_zps63a8625d.jpg~original" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>The following link is a fun page. And it shows the &quot;archaic smile&quot; on the statues that is also on earlier Athenian tetradrachms.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="http://www3.delta.edu/sewiley/artarchaic.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www3.delta.edu/sewiley/artarchaic.html" rel="nofollow">Archaic Art</a></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>And of course Wikipedia has a page on them:</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kouros" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kouros" rel="nofollow">Wikipedia Kouros</a>[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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