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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;DonnaML, post: 4554622, member: 110350&quot;][USER=26302]@medoraman[/USER], David Sear&#039;s characterization of this coin as a &quot;stater&quot; has definitely not caught on since his <i>Greek Coins</i> catalogue was published in 1978.&nbsp; The CNG Archives list 266 silver coins from Istros with the two inverted heads obverse and the eagle/dolphin reverse. Except for a handful of small trihemioboles (around 11-12 mm.), every one is described as a drachm, and zero are described as a stater.&nbsp; On acsearch, out of about 180 coins, three are called staters and the rest drachms.&nbsp; I only have the free version of coinarchives, but it&#039;s the same story there -- every one that came up was described as a drachm, and none as a stater.&nbsp; So I will continue to call mine a drachm!</p><p><br /></p><p>Separately, regarding my other question -- what the letter or symbol ligatured to the &quot;A&quot; beneath the dolphin on the reverse of my example of this coin might be -- a couple of possibilities occurred to me.&nbsp; Here&#039;s a closeup of that part of the reverse:</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1127760[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>One possibility: it&#039;s not the top part of a backwards Γ (gamma) but a complete gamma turned sideways to the right.</p><p><br /></p><p>Another possibility: as a result of the ligature, the right side of the A is also the left side of the second symbol, which would mean that that symbol could be an early form of a Greek Π (P), with a shorter right stem.&nbsp; See this excerpt from the Wikipedia article on Archaic Greek Alphabets (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaic_Greek_alphabets" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaic_Greek_alphabets" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaic_Greek_alphabets</a>): &quot;Π also typically had a shorter right stem (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Greek_Pi_archaic.svg" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Greek_Pi_archaic.svg" rel="nofollow"><img src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/47/Greek_Pi_archaic.svg/13px-Greek_Pi_archaic.svg.png" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></a>). The top of Π could be curved rather than angular, approaching a Latin P (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Greek_Pi_rounded.svg" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Greek_Pi_rounded.svg" rel="nofollow"><img src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/42/Greek_Pi_rounded.svg/13px-Greek_Pi_rounded.svg.png" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></a>). The Greek Ρ, in turn, could have a downward tail on the right, approaching a Latin R.&quot;</p><p><br /></p><p>That&#039;s probably the best I&#039;m going to come up with![/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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