Hello ladies and gentlemen, I posted my Rhodes hemidrachm on the "Follow the coin game" topic and I realized my attribution might be wrong. I bought it from an auction house that makes a lot of mistakes when attributing coins (I already spotted too many) and I think this is another case. Coin in question: Attributed by the house as: CARIA. Rhodes AR Hemidrachm, ca 404-390 BC Head of Helios facing slightly right. Rev: P - O - Rose Ashton 13-24; SNG Copenhagen 725; SNG Keckman 367; HGC 6, 1426. When I checked the attribution, the first thing I noticed was that I see no P-O on reverse. The coin is worn so it could be simply a case of losing details but I doubt it. I found the same attribution in an auction from the past and I think it's clear this is not a similar coin. What I found after checking (and I thought I was correct until today when I studied the coin again) was ISLANDS off CARIA, Rhodos. Rhodes. Circa 340-316 BC. AR Hemidrachm. Head of Helios facing slightly right / Rose with bud to right; club to left; all within incuse square. Ashton 102; HGC 6, –; SNG Keckman 429. Similar to this as I thought the worn symbol in the left of the reverse is a club and the symbol on the left is a rose bud But checking again, I think this is also wrong. Any ideas about a proper attribution, please?
There are ~600 examples in ACsearch and it looks like this type was struck for centuries. I'm not educated about the fine points of distinguishing eras of these, but after a quick spin through a couple hundred there are certain style/time groupings that stand out-- Helios's hairstyle, how the rose is drawn, small incuse square reverse or not, reverse legend and characters, etc. I think the indistinct devices on your coin's reverse may make nailing down the attribution difficult, but I favor using original attribution. Here's one from CNG that is concordant with the auction house's attribution. The flower style is close, Helios's style close, and the reverse die looks like it was a square (or square-ish) punch. CNG's catalogers are very good so that lends confidence. https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=5138219 ISLANDS off CARIA, Rhodos. Rhodes. Circa 408/7-390 BC. AR Hemidrachm (12mm, 1.76 g, 12h). Head of Helios facing slightly right / Rose within incuse square. Ashton 18; HGC 6, 1426. VF, toned, some porosity. Disclaimers: I'm not an expert, and I don't own any of the reference books used for attributing these coins.
Really appreciate your effort, @TIF. Thank you. Indeed, the coin is worn and the symbols on the reverse are very difficult to distinguish. This might be caused by the very dark toning but I don't intend to clean it as my previous attempts were big failures. The symbol on the right looks like a bud but then again this might be because of the wear. Looking at the example you found, it might be very similar. Thank you again. I think I will buy the HGC 6 volume anyway (and the other volumes), even if it might not help in this particular case, it's still a helpful book. And yes, I didn't mention the auction house because I try to avoid negative feedback. Simply because I don't see them as a bad house - everything I won arrived correctly. But there were a number of errors in attribution, some of them pretty severe as I noticed them straight away (not being a specialist). And on Roman Imperial coins. I also missed one, posting it on CT as a Geta denarius but a member pointed out it's Caracalla (and this was correct). Usually I try to doublecheck every attribution from houses, but with Demos I'm very circumspect.
I should have clued in to the fact that you'd prefer not to name them. Sorry about that! I edited my post. Related, one of my favorite auction houses (Naville)-- from whom I have bought dozens of coins in the past few years-- also has mistakes in attributions more frequently than I'd expect. Often they are clerical errors, such as switching the attribution of two adjacent coins, and sometimes it's just outdated information. As in the case you described, it doesn't deter me .
