Ever Heard of Antandrus, Troas?

Me neither. Evidently a minor city in the Troad region of Anatolia. It fades in and out of written history, and wasn't rediscovered until 1888. Serious excavation didn't occur till 1959. There's a brief article on wiki here. Evidently the folks of Antandrus started minting their own coinage around 440 BC. They were fond of lions.

In Mat's thread I commented that in the world of ancients, rarities aren't rare. You occasionally stumble on a coin that would be next to impossible to find if you went looking for it. This is a case in point. I can find no examples of this type on the web. Wildwinds and acsearch show a few right-facing lions, but none turned 1/4 left. It's SNG Cop. 218, and an itsy-bitsy thing at 1.83g. Great detail for a coin-speck, no?

 

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Nice lil' rarity, JA!

 

Thats an awesome lion. Great score JA!

 

Yes, but he doesn't look very ferocious. He looks more like one of my daughter's stuffed animals - Fuddlewuddle.

 

very nice find i like rarities

 

The truth is, I have no idea if it's a rarity. It just happens to be the only left-facing variety around at the moment. That in itself does not make it a rarity.

 

Great lil' animal-coin!! (yup, I'm Über jealous of that sweet cat-coin!!)

... man, that baby would fit-in nicely with my hoard of Troas bobbles (if you ever get tired of that sweet kitty, I am always willing to adopt a new pet)

 

for me it does,

 

Eh, I'm like you with my coins. Permanent adoption. However, I am going to another coin show today, and I'm going to keep my eyes open for any boring modern junk that I can flip on eBay to fund my ancients collection.

 

That's a great coin, JA. I've not seen a one-quarter left facing lion from Antandros before. The typical SNG Cop 218 is like my first one below, just standard right facing, and quite a bit lighter at under 1g.




I wish my two refugees from this city were in better shape, but when you take a gamble with mixed lots you gotta just roll with the dice.

 

I don't have SNG Copenhagen, so I'm not sure if 218 is the right attribution. That's just copied from the dealer. I see all the right-facing lions attributed as 218 or 219, so perhaps a left-facing one isn't in SNG Cop? Perhaps 218 var. is the proper way to number it for now?

 

Very interesting. I think this is one of those things like Doug was talking about. Once a specimen is shown here, if we like it we all start looking for something similar.

 

My son has that same lion!!!

 

Great coin for sure, congrats!

 

Aha... the problem with the OP beastie is that he doesn't have his head the right way up. The reverse needs to be rotated 90 degrees counter-clockwise.



Now, he's looking right like the rest of his friends. At this weight it should be SNG Cop 217:
O: Head of Artemis Astyrene right.
R: Lion's head right, blowing raspberry; ANTAN to right; bunch of grapes below.

 

Funny-- none of us picked up on that little malrotation

 

Eh, we just see what master tells us to see ...

 

that's a great little coin JA, i love little greek coins.

i also love big greek coins.

medium greek coins.

roman coins

byzantine coins


.....well, you get the idea.

anyway, that little lion is awesome.

 

Well now it looks like a nice beastly lion! I feel rather like a dope, but I still like the coin immensely.

 

ahahaha, JA ... man, that's kinda funny (that is definitely something "I' would have fallen for, my friend)