SELEUCUS I SILVER DRACHM – SUPER RARE ISSUE WITH MONOGRAM OF PERSIAN MAGISTRATE – AU NGC GRADED GREEK SELEUCID COIN (Inv. 20816)

$2,500.00

20816. SELEUCID KINGDOM. SELEUCUS I, 312–281 BC.
Silver Drachm, 4.08 g, 16 mm. Issue of an “Uncertain Mint” in Persis, possibly Persepolis, ca. 301–295 BC.
Obv. Head of Seleucus (or Alexander) right, wearing helmet with panther skin covering and bull’s ears and horns. Rev. BAΣIΛEΩΣ ΣEΛEYKOY, Nike standing right, crowning trophy, DW(?) (in Aramaic) below right wing.
Marest–Caffey, AJN 28, Group 6, A1; SC –; HGC 9, –.
NGC graded AU, Strike 5/5, Surface 4/5, extremely rare variety with the Aramaic legend, unpublished, and in a particularly high grade.

This drachm is the extremely rare companion fraction to the tetradrachm with the same Aramaic letters catalogued by Houghton and Lorber as SC 195. Both drachms and tetradrachms with this Aramaic inscription are thought to have had the involvement of a Persian die engraver and to have been produced in Persis––the region for which the official trophy issues of Seleucus I struck at Susa were intended. The obverse type is very likely to be an idealized portrait of Seleucus I wearing a horned helmet emblematic of his power as a great eastern king. The depiction of Nike crowning a trophy on the reverse is now known to refer to Seleucus I’s signal victory over his nemesis, Antigonus Monophthalmus, at the battle of Ipsus in 301 BC.