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Message:: [QUOTE="lordmarcovan, post: 3085412, member: 10461"]<img src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ae/Bull_leaping_minoan_fresco_archmus_Heraklion.jpg/800px-Bull_leaping_minoan_fresco_archmus_Heraklion.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bull_leaping_minoan_fresco_archmus_Heraklion.jpg" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bull_leaping_minoan_fresco_archmus_Heraklion.jpg" rel="nofollow">Wikimedia Commons</a> - public domain <a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/taurokathapsia" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/taurokathapsia" rel="nofollow">Taurokathapsia</a>.  There's your fancy word for the day.  Say it out loud if you dare.  It is a term for ritual bull-leaping in the ancient world, and is thought to have been coined around 1910 by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Evans" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Evans" rel="nofollow">Sir Arthur Evans</a>, the archaeologist who excavated the Minoan palace at Knossos in Crete with its famous frescoes showing <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bull-Leaping_Fresco" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bull-Leaping_Fresco" rel="nofollow">bull-leaping</a>. The 2,400 year old coin shown above is still about a thousand years later than the Knossos frescoes.  It shows a man (variously described as a "youth" or "bull wrestler" or as the hero <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thessalus" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thessalus" rel="nofollow">Thessalos</a>) subduing a bull by grabbing it by the horns and passing a band of leather or cloth over its eyes.  Whether the bull-wrestling hero would then jump over the bull like the ancient Minoan youths did is unknown, but the ritual sport as practiced in Thessaly apparently involved riding up to the bull on horseback and then leaping off one's horse to subdue it.  So it was quite the manly feat.  I suppose that as long as there have been bulls and men in close proximity, there has been bull-leaping, bullfighting, and rodeos. I just liked the look of the coin above, though the ancient Greek designs showing the forepart of a bisected animal body always appealed to me a little less than the ones showing the whole beastie.  (The artisans who engraved the dies were doing the best they could with available space.)  Artistic conventions aside, the design was intriguing, and I liked the toning.  The pedigree didn't hurt, either. Pros: <ul> <li>This is a considerably ancient silver coin with over 24 centuries of history.</li> <li>It has an interesting, unusual, and somewhat mysterious design.  The motif itself is clear enough, but what exactly it was intended to portray is what's intriguing.  Compared with some of the coins showing heroes wrestling lions and such, it seems almost peaceful.  Thessalos seems to be sedately leading the bull along, not the least bit winded from chasing it down and subduing it.  (Maybe that was easy for someone with such hilariously overdeveloped thighs!) It has a somewhat whimsical look, which is fun.</li> <li>The coin exhibits attractive grey toning and has in my opinion good eye appeal overall (or I wouldn't have bought it).  On any kind of circulated silver coin, I prefer this appearance to that of a coin that is all white.  All ancient silver has been cleaned after being unearthed, but the pieces which subsequently developed "cabinet toning" in old collections are the most appealing to my eyes.</li> <li>This is pedigreed to the <a href="http://www.forumancientcoins.com/numiswiki/view.asp?key=bcd%20collection" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.forumancientcoins.com/numiswiki/view.asp?key=bcd%20collection" rel="nofollow">BCD collection</a>, which is not a rare pedigree (BCD had an enormous collection), but a recognized, important, and well-published one, cited by many references on Greek coins.</li> <li>At a cost of slightly over $100 USD, this was a (reasonably) affordable coin as ancient Greek silver goes.</li> </ul>Cons:<ul> <li>There are some faint old scratches in the unstruck metal along one portion of the obverse edge.  These are noticeable but not necessarily distracting.</li> <li>The grade is relatively modest as the coin did receive some noticeable wear in ancient times, but everything's "all there", and while not a high grade piece, it's not especially low-end, either.  It's a middle-of-the-road example, gradewise.</li> <li>There is some doubling in the reverse strike, giving the horse's face a somewhat strange appearance.  Doubling seems to be less appealing to collectors of ancient coins than it is to enthusiasts of modern error coins, but it's really more of a neutral consideration than a negative one.  Some might even like it.</li> <li>This is a hemidrachm (half-drachm), so a somewhat smaller denomination, though at 15 mm in diameter (just barely smaller than a United States dime) it could better be described as "small" rather than "tiny".  People tend to prefer the bigger denominations like tetradrachms, but that's why those are so expensive.  These smaller coins offer a much more affordable opportunity to collect ancient Greek silver, and the artistry on some of the small denominations can still be breathtaking (though it's more average in this particular case).</li> </ul>Feel free to post your similar coins if you like. 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