CATANE SILVER TETRADRACHM – EX GUSTAV PHILIPSEN COLLECTION SOLD IN HIRSCH XV, 1906 – VF CREEK SICILY COIN (Inv. 19913)

$5,350.00

19913. SICILY, CATANE. Circa 450–445 BC.
Silver Tetradrachm, 16.98 g, 25 mm.
Obv. Charioteer driving slow quadriga right. Rev. Head of Apollo right, wearing laurel wreath.
Mirone 30–3; HGC 2, 566; SNG ANS 1245 (same dies); Rizzo pl. X, 1/2 (same dies).
Ex Gerald F. Borrmann Collection, CNG 127, 9/1/2024, lot 25 = ex CNG inventory 944835 (March 2013) = ex Robert and Julius Diez Collection, CNG Electronic Auction 294, 1/16/2013, lot 41 = Gustav Philipsen Collection (Part I, J. Hirsch XV, 28 May 1906), lot 960 (unillustrated, but thus noted on the Diez tickets handled by CNG – the weight and diameter match the Hirsch specimen).
About VF, with old cabinet patina, some minor marks and scratches, of attractive style and great centering.

From the introduction provided by CNG in 2013 (slightly edited):
“Prof. Dr. Robert Diez (1844–1922) was the son of Emil Diez, the mayor of Pößneck. Shortly after his birth, the family moved to Dresden, a city renowned for its culture and artistic associations. There, Robert studied art, becoming a well–known sculptor in the process. Much of his work was created for public moments in Germany, including the Reichstag in Berlin. A member of both the Dresden and Berlin Academy of Arts, Diez was influenced by the sculpture of ancient Greece…Munich–born Julius Diez (1870 – 1957), like his relative, was an artist, professor, and intellectual. A painter and a graphic artist, Diez was influenced by the prevailing artistic trends of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries…. Diez, in 1908, created a bookplate for the author and fellow member of the Münchener Secession, George Habich. This last work is notable not just for the social association, but also because two Greek coins were included in the design.
While it is uncertain which of the two men, Prof. Dr. Robert Diez or Julius Diez, started and built it, the Diez Collection offers a unique window into the collecting of Greek coins at the beginning of the last century. Of the 176 coins in this sale, only 26 are not pedigreed to earlier sales, including A. Hess Nachf., Brüder Egger, and Dr. Jacob Hirsch —and came from important collections including Consul Weber, Virzi, Philipsen, and von Schennis, as well as the Berlin Königliches Münzkabinett duplicates which were originally part of Imhoof–Blumer’s collection…Since many of the coins in this collection were not illustrated in the original sales catalogs, their illustration in this sale will provide a useful supplement to those important sales of the first two decades of the twentieth century.”