Once again we would like to welcome you to our latest auction, Nomos 15.

The coins and medals in this sale are of gold, silver and various copper alloys; they range in date from the 6th century BC until the 18th century AD; they were struck in mints that range geographically from the Netherlands to northwest India; and in size from a tiny silver hemiobol of 0.27 g to a large silver medal of 94 g! Not only that, the coins come from collections in both the US and all over Europe; some even have collecting histories going back into the 19th century! The sale begins with a few Celtic pieces and then moves on to 197 lots of Greek coins: ranging from a silver nomos of Nola in Campania (lot 5, est. 550.-, and from the White-King sale of 1909) to a tetradrachm of Ptolemy VI (lot 202, est. 450.-) bought from Bank Leu in the late 1960s. Some especially interesting pieces are lot 28, a lovely archaic tetradrachm of Syracuse (est. 10,000.); lot 50, a remarkable posthumous Lysimachos gold stater with an unknown portrait (est. 6500.-); lot 62, a very rare tetradrachm of Philip II (est. 4500.-); lot 87, a spectacular ‘prototype’ tetradrachm of Perseus (est, 25,000.-); lot 102, a very rare and attractive stater of Delphi (est. 55,000.-); and, of course, there is lot 123, the spectacular Arkadian League stater from Megalopolis (est. 180,000.-). And there are certainly many more Greek coins of interest! Next come 114 lots of Roman and Byzantine coins, 2 medieval and 7 selected Dutch medals. One special piece is an As struck by Sextus Pompey with a double-portrait of his father, Cn. Pompeius Magnus (lot 209, est. 4500.-): the quality of this portrait coin, which first appeared on sale in Basel in 1955, is astoundingly high. Most unusual is the large (30 mm) tetrassarion from Aegeae in Cilicia with its portraits of Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar (lot 219, est. 4250.-). A personal favorite is the fabulous sestertius of Diva Faustina II, which shows the deified empress enthroned in the heavens (lot 256, est. 32,500.-) – the quality of the engraving is of the highest. Lot 274, a sestertius of Julia Maesa, which was once in the collections of Maxime Collignon, E.G. Spencer Churchill and others, has one of the finest of all numismatic portraits of this powerful woman (est. 5000.-); another bronze of beautiful quality is lot 287, the medallion of Probus from Leu 71 (est. 42,500.-). Lot 312 is a great Byzantine rarity, a solidus of Nicephoros I minted in Syracuse in 802-803 (est. 7500.-). Finally there is the extremely rare medal of the value of 4½ ducats from West-Friesland (lot 319, est. 15,000.- ): the only known example in gold (and very rare in silver), this was struck as a call to unity in the face of dissension between the Dutch provinces. We certainly hope that this extensive selection will prove attractive to collectors of all kinds.