Syracuse Dekadrachm

Dekadrachms are wonderful but considerably more common that the silver hexas (1/6 litra or 1/300 dekadrachm). Mine is in rough shape but will do until the better one finds me.


Three times as big but equally rare is the hemilitron (six dots). I find the art work on this amazing. If I were to travel back in time and could bring back a dekadrachm's worth of coins, none would be larger than these two but there would be a lot of them.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

Thank you very much to all Collegues! Yours all "syracusians" are great, big tets, eye catching bronzes which are lovely to admire and tiny silver which personally I am seeing first time even at picture!

 

I recently sold this one in CNGs eAuction (Hieronymus):




This was how it looked prior my restoration:

 

A point: Collectors and scholars tend to study what they consider the 'best' so it is easier to find references on die variations of big silver than it is to find type mention of small fractions. Add to that the fact that we seem to lack large pot finds with thousands of obols and under so most of what we have were 'field finds' as individuals that suffered greatly from direct soil contact. Low grade coins, small coins and coins considered beneath one's notice add up to it being quite possible to find a coin that has not been reported in the literature even from a major city like Syracuse. I was first interested in the small coins years ago by the publication of the Rosen collection (1983) which had coins of all sizes including many small coins. It had only a fraction of what exists even without dipping to the level of a die study (admittedly impossible given the lack of surviving material). The Foreword mentions how many of the coins in the collection remained unattributed. I assume that some of these small coins were made in large quantities and served daily needs of their cities before disappearing into dust. Today, more of us show interest in them but they still don't get the 'press' of the large ones. Does anyone know a book or website that concentrates on fractionals? I used to go to shows and ask for fractional silver. Most dealers either acted like no one should care about them or showed me drachms which, I guess, are fractions of the coins they preferred. My only daughter has no interest in my collection except she would like my small Greek silver (which I define as under 10mm and keep separately for her to inherit). Strange tastes run in the family.

 

I agree with you about tiny coins @dougsmit . Every time I have purchase a tiny after short time I have sell it - they are difficult to pick up in hand and easy to loose, they are very inconvenient, but they are have some kind of magic for shure to fall in love until you buy it

 

May be Persefone looks like...