Significance of design

[expat]

On a series of Ar drachms of THRACIA, Apollonia Pontica, 480-450 BCE. One side has a facing gorgon and the other an inverted anchor with a crayfish and the letter A. Some have the crayfish under the left anchor point and the A under the right. Others are vice versa. Is this just the whim of the die sinker or is there a justifiable difference?

[Deinomenid]

It is possible that's a fake of a fake. I hate  it when this sort of thing is inconclusively said/written and I may be completely wrong but there have been a few discussions about this since the infamous hoard. Our own @Ed Snible had something on  it - it may be 5 Alt A on this website,  but it's hard to tell without your images and the image  of that 5 Alt A  is tricky too.

I'm sorry  if this is an  unnecessary concern I've raised - it's  just one  I remembered. I get nervous around coins from there!

  http://snible.org/coins/black_sea_hoard.html

[expat]

14 minutes ago, Deinomenid said:

It is possible that's a fake of a fake. I hate  it when this sort of thing is inconclusively said/written and I may be completely wrong but there have been a few discussions about this since the infamous hoard. Our own @Ed Snible had something on  it - it may be 5 Alt A on this website,  but it's hard to tell without your images and the image  of that 5 Alt A  is tricky too.

I'm sorry  if this is an  unnecessary concern I've raised - it's  just one  I remembered. I get nervous around coins from there!

  http://snible.org/coins/black_sea_hoard.html

This is the dealers image

[Ed Snible]

No one knows why the A is sometimes on the left, sometimes on the right.

Here are some examples in museum collections.  There were two weight standards, the lighter weight is standard is later.  The A is on the left more often in these lower-weight examples.

 

I have been trying to arrange and study these coins for many years.  (Nothing to publish, yet.)  The years are for when the museum either acquired or published a photo of the coin.

[expat]

29 minutes ago, Ed Snible said:

No one knows why the A is sometimes on the left, sometimes on the right.

Here are some examples in museum collections.  There were two weight standards, the lighter weight is standard is later.  The A is on the left more often in these lower-weight examples.

 

I have been trying to arrange and study these coins for many years.  (Nothing to publish, yet.)  The years are for when the museum either acquired or published a photo of the coin.

If you don;t mind, what is your opinion based upon the dealer image I posted above?

[Ed Snible]

3 hours ago, expat said:

If you don;t mind, what is your opinion based upon the dealer image I posted above?

It looks genuine.

[DonnaML]

@expat and @Ed Snible, I probably spent more time researching my example of the A/crayfish type before buying it than any other ancient coin I have, including looking at every image of fakes I could find, and digging up old articles by Reid Goldsborough available only on the Wayback Machine, as well as an old article from The Celator from the early 2000s, and a Bulgarian book available on Kindle.  So I'm at least somewhat confident that the example I purchased (from London Ancient Coins) is genuine. By a few one-hundredths of a gram, it apparently falls into the later, lighter group that Ed mentioned, with the "A" on the left and the crayfish on the right, although the obverse most closely resembles an earlier type in the Goldsborough classification scheme. (A discrepancy that concerns me, of course, although not inordinately.)

Thrace, Apollonia Pontika [now Sozopol, Bulgaria], AR Drachm, ca. 430-300 BCE. Obv. Upright anchor with large flukes and curved stock; “A” [for Apollonia] to left and crayfish to right between flukes and stock  / Rev. Facing gorgoneion (Medusa), wavy hair parted in middle, 16 thin, open-mouthed snakes around head as additional hair or crown, puffy cheeks, mouth open, tongue protruding (but not extending below chin), all within shallow incuse. Goldsborough Type 3 obverse? [Goldsborough, Reid, Apollonia Pontika Drachms (see https://web.archive.org/web/20141115000124/http://medusacoins.reidgold.com/apollonia.html), Catalogue of Types]; Seaby 1655 var. (crayfish to left, A to right) [Sear, David, Greek Coins and their Values, Vol. 1: Europe (Seaby 1978); Topalov 41-42 [Topalov, Stavri, Apollonia Pontika: Contribution to the Study of the Coin Minting of the City 6th - 1st c. B.C., Catalogue of Apollonia Coins, 7^th-1^st c. B.C. (Sofia, 2007) (English Translation, Kindle edition)]; BMC 15 Mysia 8-10 [Wroth, Warwick, A Catalog of the Greek Coins in the British Museum, Vol. 15, Mysia (London, 1892) at pp. 8-9]; SNG.BM.159 [ = BMC Mysia 10]; see also ID Nos. 154-158  [Sylloge Nummorum Graecorum, Great Britain, Volume IX, British Museum, Part 1: The Black Sea (London, 1993), ID No. 159 available online at  http://www.s391106508.websitehome.co.uk/PHP/SNG_PHP/04_03_Reply.php?Series=SNGuk&AccessionNo=0901_0159]. 14 mm., 2.96 g., 3 h. Purchased from London Ancient Coins, June 2020.

Edited June 7, 2023 by DonnaML

[expat]

Lovely example @DonnaML it is quite a substantial warren to navigate when you enter this particular rabbit hole it seems.