Teos (BC 530-500) Hemidrachm

ca 510 BC. AR Hemidrachm (3.50g). Protome of a winged griffin right, forelegs extended with talons outstretched / Irregular incuse square. Extremely rare. Toned, EF.

From the collections of H.S. von Aulock and R. Jameson. This is a most enigmatic coin, possibly even unpublished. While it was attributed to Teos in von Aulock, Jameson pointed out that griffin protomes were not used there (but cf. coin #557); Balcer excluded it from his corpus (without comment). It could have been minted in Phokaia, as Babelon pointed out in his commentary on a very similar drachm (Traite'), especially since griffin protomes were used on later issues at Phokaia.