Saw this piece coming up for auction at Heritage on the 18th. Rarely see a near full crest on the helmet and well centered owl. At this point in time top bid is $1300 w/one day left.
This is one of the few Ancients on my "dream" list.. for now my DC owl has to do but that coin is spectacular.. If your bidding I hope you get it. Thanks for sharing
Despite the good centering & full crest, the obverse shows serious die wear. The grade AU*, Strike 5/5, Surface 4/5 suggests that someone will over-pay for the coin. It might hammer for 3k.
Excellent strike and centering on the coin. Some of the best I've seen. I don't think this is the original type though, this might be a bit later than the originals because the owl looks different.
FYI it's generally considered a faux-pas on the Ancients forum to post coins currently up for auction.
@Severus Alexander Why is that? I just used the current coin to illustrate it's condition. Very rarely have I seen a coin of this type with nearly full crest and well centered owl presented here on this forum or any other. Is it in any of the rules that this is frowned upon? I just thought that the members would enjoy seeing a prime example. The post received 10 "Likes", some from very knowledgeable members. No complaints from them.
As beautiful as that owl is, plus the hammer price which will be stratospheric, I think I'll stick with my owl with a good portion of the crest present. Die wear and circulation are obvious, but at least it is not encased in plastic. Another one, a later standardized owl and much cruder. And then there's this odd ball, with a small obverse die.
As I understand it, the reasons are twofold: 1) If a member is watching the coin, they won't be very happy to see it advertised. 2) It's open to abuse if consignors can "just happen" to post a coin for sale without revealing that it's their coin. That could destroy the board if it happened a lot, so there needs to be a norm against it. Especially with only one day left, it's easy to wait until after the sale to post. No, it doesn't break any forum rules, it's just a convention here in the Ancients' section. I didn't mean to complain, just to make you aware of the convention in a friendly way. Probably should have added an emoji.
From what I've seen the past few years I think this is a good value. Not very well versed on these, but from what I've seen at shows, it did well.
The coin quite obviously does NOT have a full crest as the lower part is off the flan and also part of border is trimmed along the flan. But it seems bidders do not look at the coin but at what the slab says
Lovely coin. The discussion of a full crest reminds me of the lady who was trying to sell her "full crested" Owl for $1 million. It wasn't quite a full crest, and it too had die wear.
