Above is a Thompson #1, It is Thompson obverse type 3. So far I have found this obverse mated with mated with 6 other reverses, I think this maybe with yet another!  What do you think...my eyes are dull I cannot see!   What it means quite simply that there was a crazy amount of reverses to the one obverse.If people think it is then I shall add it to the picture above where my extensive researches has taken me. Numbers 1 & 2 are mated with the first Thompson obverses for which I have never found examples except in the ANS collection, so obverse 3 seems to the daddy of them all.

Thanks in anticipation!

I'm not a believer. 

For papers on pamphylian Alexanders try Meadows and MacIntyre for Seleucid eras, via academia.edu.

But the only diadochi portrait is Ptolemy l , Seleucus is doubtful, Eumenes no,Antigonus no, Lysimachus no. Antipater no, Craterus no, Polyperchon no !  Have I missed one?  Coins minted by them or thought to be yeah, but maybe not Eumenes or Polyperchon, and Philip ll was never really a Diadochi, but no portrait,. 

Coming back to the Silver tetradrachm, can I ask where did you get it from? Is that yellowish colour a reflection?

Sadly the monogram doesn't tell us anything, the order of the intpretation may be or maybe incorrect, and what does it reference? A name, a personal name, mint who knows. One thing is that it isn't the well known monogram of Pergamon that appears on the year 1 gold staters of Mithradates. Other silver tetradrachms with Pergamene regnal years , via Roma archive, ac search, don't have this monogram, but L' historie would need to be consulted. I like anything to do with the Mithradatic times and I cannot understand why the period is not so well collected because, without doubt, the 3 Mithradatic wars against the Romans sounded the death knell of the real Greek world.

A recent striking numismatic discovery provides the final piece of evidence. In 2003 a previously unknown coin of Magnesia on the Maeander came to light.38 Another was discovered and auctioned in 2008.39 The coin in question is a didrachm, weighting circa 6.04g, issued probably between 88 and 85 BC. Bust of Artemis with earring, metal band in her hair, bow stylized in the shape of stag’s head, and quiver on her back, is featured on the obverse. A grazing (drinking?) stag, standing on a narrow strip of meandering pattern with a triangular monogram between his legs, is on the reverse. The legend reads ΜΑΓΝΗΤΩΝ (reverse, above, interrupted by a star between Η and Τ), and ΜΑΙANΔΡIΟΣ ΑΡΤΕΜΙΔΥ – the name of the monetary magistrate (reverse, below, in exergue).40 The iconography of the coin is alien to the Magnesian tradition and shows strong influence of Mithridates’ coinage. The bust of Artemis is different from the earlier civic Artemis-imagery, being modeled after the Pontic bronze and silver coins. The grazing stag is a complete oddity in the local coinage: it is a borrowing from the contemporary gold and silver Mithridatic issues struck at Pergamum.41 This silver issue is paralleled by several issues of bronze coins, known before but not fully understood until recently.42 If the suggested interpretation is correct,43 it could only mean that Magnesia on the Maeander joined the Pontic king willingly, and publicly –––––––– 36 Cic. Pro Flacc. 57. 37 Plut. Praec. ger. reipub. 14 alludes to these preparations. 38 Ph. Kinns, A New Didrachm of Magnesia on the Maeander, The Numismatic Chronicle, 166, 2006, pp. 41-47. 39 R. Ashton, The Use of Cistoforic Weight-Standard Outside the Pergamene Kingdom, in: P. Thonemann (ed.), Attalid Asia Minor: Money, International Relations and the State, Oxford, 2013, p. 250, n. 17. 40 The same city official is mentioned in I.Magnesia 100b, 43-44 (=Syll. 3 695b, 91-92): ἡρέθη ἐπὶ τῆς ἀναγραφῆς | τῶν ψηφισμάτων Μαιάνδριος Ἀρτεμιδώρου (the end of the 2nd century BC). 41 Ph. Kinns, op. cit., pp. 41, 46-47 (cf. pl. 13). 42 Ibid., pp. 42-46. 43 It is accepted as such by P. Thonemann, The Meander Valley: A Historical Geography from Antiquity to Byzantium, Cambridge, 2011, p. 39. N. Vujčić, A city that resisted Mithridates, ŽAnt 67 (2017) 61–70 69 celebrated the decision. Not only does Magnesia ad Sipylum now seem to be “the more likely option” as the stronghold of resistance,44 but the latest evidence also serves to round up what was already a compelling case for the Lydian city

A much less "factional" account of Eupator is Philip Matyszak "Mithradates the Great". I do wish there was a book that told of which cities and such were  pro Mithradates or pro Rome  and for how long.  When you look up Mithrades's tetradrachms most say Pergamon Mint even those that are impossible. Remember Fimbria whipped Mithradates Junior, and turfed Senior out of Pergamon and pursued him so he had to be rescued by pirates whilst Sulla was still in Central Greece. I think...a time line of where and when the central characters where would be a great help too

In other words, a fully expanded book on Eupator! eg, How did the cities of Crete react to the toppling of Roman influence?  Arados, Tenedos, Ephesos, Pergamon, Athens.Chios. Mytilene , Egypt, Bithynia, Cappadocia etc etc etc....

L' historie des guerres Mithradatiques vue la par monnaise....Francois de Callatay 1997

You should find our coin type in there and other information on Mithradatic coin types of the Mithradatic wars. Essential reading, even if it's in French!  Sadly I cannot read French, so most of it was beyond me.

Artemis and Demeter on the hunt for Persephone. Demeter with long torch. "Where in the Hades is that damn girl?"

Athens New Style Tetradrachm c 71/0 BC

A real nice bit of artwork.

A  F. de Luca has done a die study of Antigonid coins in the Greek Numismatical museum. On academia.edu

F. De Luca, The tetradrachms of Perseus of Macedonia, Italian and English text, Associazione culturale Italia Numismatica, Editrice Diana, 2021

@Rand My wish: To know the reasons and the story.

I guess and hope if someone's done the work and are confident of it that they have published it somewhere and the bidders are sometime willing to share their insights!. That is how numismatics advances, not by secretly squirreling info away like a.....self satisfied squirrel! We all advance on the shoulders of others, there are people who don't reciprocate and live in their own private world as there are thieves and rogues and vagabonds, shysters everywhere.

All my sources are public and my crazy writings are also!

I just don't geddit!  An unknown coin from an unknown findspot from an unknown area from an unknown ancient society that copied another well known coin type of the mid sort of 4th century!  Almost everything about it is speculation, which is likely to stay that way! There is nothing to learn from it...its in isolation even the only bit of writing is a lie! And that's so banal. Might be knocked out by a local blacksmith not an official imitative mint of some sort! It seems the coin weight can be anything you want it to be, what's the connection between 13.08 gm and 16.9 gm? !! 

Other than ownership, I just don't geddit! And it just aint purty but some cant say no!

And that Hoard of Tigranes ll tets  seems to be bigger than I thought, they've spread around a lot!

53 minutes ago, JAZ Numismatics said:

Did you see these two New Styles in Auction XXX? Gorgeous...

Lot 132

Lot 133

The first one is very similar to one I sold via Roma a couple of years ago!  I stopped collecting Thompson middle catalogue coins and sold them excepting my favourites. I possibly have the only COMPLETE collection of Thompson early catalogue in the world! Mainly due to a purchase of a Thompson #5 2 Palms via Roma ! It is one of 4 known and my researches show all the others are in museums!  I do not collect for prettiness, so some coins are "horrible"!

I have collected all the Thompson late catalogue that I can which basically is the coins which form the Rome-Pontic times of the 1st Mithradatic where the Athens NewStyles are believed to show the rivalry between 2 deadly factions. Upto the Basileus Mithradates issue whose occurrence on the market is singular and was above my reach when it appeared 10 years or so ago! However still got the odd other one still missing..Hermes/No symbol....etc!

I also collect post-Sullan types and have some great rarities !

Where the fascination with the banal, quotidian old style is ( A. Meadows- I didn't know what Quotidian meant, I had to look it up,but then I'm not a fellow of All Souls or something at Oxford!) I too cannot fathom!!!! Each to their own!

Yes, John, but the prices!  So far a handful at £600 ( even 1 with a test cut!), ,1 at £900 with test cut! and 1 at £1700!!!!  Oh seriously!. I am familiar with old styles and I just don't geddit! Didn't CNG sell a lot at a good fixed price and they selected the coin!!  Size, weight and head crests I sort of get but some/ most of them.....meh!

I saw it too, there is still around enough old styles of the mass classic variety to rebuild the Parthenon and the whole acropolis  several times over! How they are the prices that they command is a mystery to me! NewStyles by comparison are as scarce as rocking horse doo dahs. The last big Turkish find had over 70,000 tets and there was another shortly before that, well that's the info I've garnered, but, maybe you know more!!! Roma as already sold 100's, and others have too!  Where do they all go?

Roma's NewStyles don't get my juices going, sad to say, they are the forgotten bastard step-child of the old style! One of them is a previous offering, the Horse one is the "skinny horse" type sans bridle, claimed to be T163 -I have my doubts-, the one without the horse protomes!

You never see the old styles that came just before the NewStyle and no one except me seems to be interested or knows of their existence 

Generally Roma's auction e118 is below par to me!

@Phil Anthos

From the Jörg Müller Collection; ex CNG

Is this the late but great Jorge Muller who was into re-dating Athenian NewStyles and Ephesian Cistaphoros? 

Muller, Jorge W., “The chronology of Ephesos revisited”. Schweizer Munzblatter Band 77   1998

                            A re-dating of the dated coins of Ephesos on grounds that the Romans only actually controlled  and minted coins in Ephesos five years later than assumed from the bequest of Attalos III. My ideas on the significance of the “Headdress of Isis” symbol in the Rome-Pontic times benefit hugely from his scheme. Opposed by DeCallatay in “More than it would seem….” 2011 below.

Crown of Iset-Reviewed (By John Arnold Nisbet on academia.edu....me)

Maybe the die cutter had cut so many reverses that he got carpal tunnel and couldn't do anymore obverses? What do we learn from it though? What's the book?

What do you hope to learn? It is reckoned that the difference in the intensity of a strike on the bottom (obverse) was much less by that caused on upper die. You will see it is often guessed that for tetradrachm production that 20000 obverses and 10000  reverses could be produced from the respective dies.. Using figures like this people like F.deCallatay try to quantise coin production data. But a simple inspection of say, the plates of Thompson's NSSCA will apparently show that the quality of the strikes deteriorate and carelessness creeps in, you'll see all kinds of die damage and deterioration... pretty coins was not that important. The workers were most probably slaves and the quantity over quality pressure was more their concern. Poorer quality dies, poorer quality blanks also would factor. People like Ted Buttrey were very skeptical of quantised production calculations. When the heat is on, wrong reverses are mated with the wrong obverses producing a mule! Sometimes it's probably deliberate, where a die is good enough to to use on a different reverse die. Transfer obverse dies are very useful in numismatics for internal chronology studies etc. Indeed some dies were apparently re-engraved just to squeeze out a few more coins from a die! The best information comes from the short lived stephanophores of the mid 2nd century BC, say of Kyme, Myrina, Magnesia ad Meander and most obviously The Athens NewStyle where the reverses seem to changed with new magistrates every year. The study of how many obverses to reverses shows the minting pressure better than poorly produced coins!

A couple of Athens NewStyle references to Dionysos. The Vine leaf and grapes issue Thoneman called it " frankly a mess" , referring to the inscription, but for prosopographical information, obviously a winner!  The Thyrsos is clear on this 2nd example first noted via the Gaziantep Hoard, but this symbol was a biggy in the Elysian mysteries which Dionysos seems to play a part in too...why?.......

God as Cult Initiate: Dionysos and the Eleusinian Mysteries in Greek Vase-Painting

https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE|A561685528&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=10435158&p=AONE&sw=w&userGroupName=anon~87881ca7&aty=open-web-entry#:~:text=Dionysos might even have been,secret part of the ritual.

Looking like obverse T104. With the reverse of T103 , the DELTA being off flan.  See where the palm breaks through the amphora handle!  Many new Palm behind owls have appeared over the years  no doubt with new obverse/reverse pairings. You can download Thompson via WILDWINDS, Athens  at the bottom . 

my coin is T109! Athens New Style Tetradrachm 149/8 BC

Obs : Athena Parthenos right in tri-form helmet
34mm 16.64g Thompson issue 16
Thompson catalogue: Obs 109 : Rev (not in plates)/ NEW?
Rev : AΘE ethnic
Owl standing on overturned panathenaic amphora
on which 2 control letters Ε ? : RF month mark Ι
ΠOΛΥ , TI - MPΔ monogram
2 magistrates : ΠΟΛΥ TIMARCHIDES
Symbol : Palm Leaf (oblique behind owl)
All within a surrounding olive wreath

This picture from Svoronos Treasure's is the best known, the headdress is more like that of Isis and similar to the example on my other post Sulla Isis NewStyle of Archtimos, of which an excellent pic from my archives is given

This is another rare post Sullan NewStyle and the type is a Hall of notoriety in NewStyle chronology terms.  When  L C "lucky" Sulla snook out of Rome to take command of the Roman senatorial forces against Mithradates of Pontus he headed directly for Athens emptying treasures in temples on the way because he was not sort of the official choice, Marius was, but he died! He took Lucius Lucullus with him who was dispatched to raise a fleet because he had no ships and Pontus was strong in ships. His Brother, Marcus Lucullus was made a Quaestor to convert loot into coin and produced the famous pseudo-Athenian NewStyle coinage for Sulla. Sulla did what he does best and takes Athens March 86 BC and kills the hold outs in the Acropolis soon after, meanwhile, Mithradates's  general Archaelos sails away from Athens harbour Piraeus  untouched.  

Now what to do? Simples, thrash Mithradates's generals twice in central Greece. Then an official Roman commander Flaccus turns up in Asia Minor and promptly is killed by his 2IC Fimbria. Who peregrinates asia minor, thrashes Mithradates jnr. in battle, takes Eupator' s capital Pergamon, forcing him too flee onto pirate vessels and away cos the Romans argue who's the  real propraetor refuse to co-operate  and that's it , essentially 1st Mithradatic war over.  Sulla is a bit scary and sets off after Fimbria who commits suicide when his troops desert!  Sulla and Mithradates sign peace terms at Dardanus, Sulla gets all Athenian and becomes an initiate of Elysian mysteries and sets off to become dictator of Rome.

The big question is did the NewStyle coinage immediately restart after the sacking? No one knows Below is the sort of official NewStyle position with the number of known obverses known in 1961 and today, ( not much change). It seems to pick up steam again and then falls off a cliff. My general idea is it got started to help finance the 2nd Mithradatic war and the beginning of the 3rd but became essentially redundant against the denarius and the Thasian imitations and the various smaller league achaean league triobols that equated better to the denarius. The celtic tribes loved the Thasian tetradrachms and kept producing their own wild imitations, they were, after all, barbarians!.

So who and why produce the NewStyle beyond the early 70's BC?

Only as a kind of remembrance of old times when they were sort of independent and mattered somewhat, but nowadays essentially Roman proxy state, much reduced and only important cos the Romans loved Athenian Greek culture and festivals .

I believe they were commemorative coinages, specially minted as souvenirs. What use was such a small mintage otherwise, tokens, local propaganda, temple coinage. Eventually most Roman dominated cities were refused to mint silver and Athens like most of them died. The denarius essentially ruled. The cistaphorus struggled on as a tri drachm under Octavian/Augustus, the drachm became a denarius. The rest is history!

This very rare NewStyle issue was used as a base coin to overstrike an Aesillas tetradrachm. But because the florit of neither type was known the dating by means of one or the other was contentious. The dating of the Aesillas coinage is still not known, but Robert Baulaugh's Silver coinage with the types of Aesillas, Quaestor, has shown it to be an intermittent coinage  from c 95 to c 70/65 BC that can be partitioned into Vlll groups, the Aesillas type overstruck on the Demeas Kallikratides issue is a Bauslaugh group Vlll o94/r353 and late into the coinage. The post-Sullan NewStyles  essentially show few obverse die transfers and useful hoards, however the 3 issues of Diokles, of which I have the 2nd issue, can be roughly dated because he was a known entity. So we still go by Miss Thompsons internal chronology on top of Lewis's new general chronology, but, certainly the early catalogue and it's internal chronology seems to follow the hoard evidence. Generally it is believed to be what it appears in my listing, after firmly planting my feet on the shoulders of Lewis,Mattingly, Morkholm, Meadows et al! But with homage to the great Miss Margaret Thompson.

The symbol is taken to be Isis but it has been queried and all the examples of this issue are from very heavily used dies. They say the headdress is a give a way, but I cannot see it it's so badly reproduced and the thing it is carrying is also hard to make out, but Isis was famous for carrying things like situla's.....oh well until a better example surfaces...don't hold your breath..mine, the 6th appears to be the last known!  Empty your pockets!!! 

Athens New Style Tetradrachm c 73/2 BC

Obs : Athena Parthenos right in tri-form helmet
31 mm 16.15 gm Thompson issue ?
Thompson catalogue: Obs 1233 Rev: ?
Rev : ΑΘΕ ethnic
Owl standing on overturned panathenaic amphora
on which month mark ? ΣΩ below
2 magistrates :DEMEAS KALLIKRATIDES
RF symbol : Isis
All surrounded by an olive wreath