ancient owls

[BooYah]

hi does any one know a web site were i could look at and possibly purchase an ancient owl coin?

[Scottishmoney]

hi does any one know a web site were i could look at and possibly purchase an ancient owl coin?

 

 

For not so nice owls, but inexpensive you can always try eBay.com

 

For nicer stuff try:

 

VCoins.com site

[mmarotta]

1. The recommendation to check vcoins.com is a good one. They are a reputable and validated ring of competing dealers. There are many alternatives, but Vcoins will at least help you understand what you are shopping for and what kind of coin you can get for $750 to $2000.

 

2. You want to Search All Stores

for

Athens tetradrachm

ALL words in string.

 

3. There are four kinds of Owls.

The oldest, archaic Owls are very expensive and not generally what collectors seek.

 

The Classic Owl is what most people mean:

http://www.vcoins.com/ancient/calgarycoin/...ct=2049&large=0

This was from the time of the Golden Age. The Persians had been defeated. Athens was not yet drained by the Peloponnesian Wars. Socrates had not been put to death. The temples were being built.

 

The transitional style or "Frontal Eye" is also not as attractive as the Classical Owls.

http://www.vcoins.com/ancient/ephesus/stor...uct=665&large=0

Athens had lost the war against Sparta. The coins show the moral and cultural decline of the town.

 

The New Style tetradrachms are often compelling, very beautiful.

http://www.vcoins.com/ancient/eukratides/s...uct=214&large=0

But they come from a later time, 200-100 BC or so. Athens had rebounded somewhat but was then subjugated by Rome.

 

4. You will want to READ about them before you make your purchase. Do you want a coin from the time of Pericles, or from the time of the great dramatists and Socrates? Does it matter?

 

5. Many -- perhaps most -- "Athens" owls are not really from Athens. If you want to know more, we can get into the ugly details of the revelation by T. V. Buttrey.

(*Buttrey T.V., 'Pharaonic Imitations of Athenian Tetradrachms', Proceedings of the 9th International Congress of Numismatics 1982, 137-40)

 

6. It was one of my first coins. Even after I stopped collecting and sold off my inventory, I kept this as an example of an ancient coin.

[Reid Goldsborough]

5.  Many -- perhaps most -- "Athens" owls are not really from Athens.  If you want to know more, we can get into the ugly details of the revelation by T. V. Buttrey.

(*Buttrey T.V., 'Pharaonic Imitations of Athenian Tetradrachms', Proceedings of the 9th International Congress of Numismatics 1982, 137-40)

 

Good synopsis of Owls as collectables, but I believe it's more accurate to say that some Owls are not from Athens, not many or most are. Ted Buttrey's work is only about classical (old style) Owls, not archaic, intermediate style, or new style. And he admitted himself that a die study is needed to confirm his hypothesis that many of the classical Owls attributed today to Athens were actually minted in Egypt. There's lots of ancient documentary evidence about the huge output of classical Owls from Athens. It is clear that some classical and later Owls were minted in Egypt, Arabia, Samaria, Syria, Persia, Bakria, and so on, but there's no evidence that these came anywhere near approaching let alone surpassing the huge output of Owls from Athens. At any rate, in all the SNGs and other attribution references as well as current auction catalogs, standardized classical Owls commonly dated 449 to 413 BC (per Sear) without anomalous styling or legends are all attributed to Athens.

 

I've got a bit more detail about this issue here:

 

http://rg.ancients.info/guide/egypt.html

[BooYah]

thanks for the replies..as always you all have been a big help....but most every thing ive found so far has been out of my price range...for now anyway...