SICULO-PUNIC TETRADRACHM – VICTORY CROWNING HORSE TYPE EX SALTON, RICHARD PAYNE-KNIGHT WITH PROVENANCE TO THE LATE 1700s – VF NGC GRADED GREEK SICILY COIN (Inv. 20371)

SOLD

20371. SICILY. SICULO–PUNIC. Ca. 410–390 BC.
Silver Tetradrachm, 16.50 g, 24 mm.
Obv. Horse protome left, Nike flying left above, crowning the head, barley grain in left field. Rev. QRT–ḤDŠT (“Carthage” in Punic), palm tree with dates on either side.
Jenkins, Coins of Punic Sicily, 31.6 (O8/R30, this coin listed and illustrated); HGC 2, 262; SNG Copenhagen 70 (same dies).
Ex Salton Collection, Stack’s Bowers January 2022 NYINC Auction, 1/16/2022, lot 4163= Naville Ars Classica XIV (Capt. E.G. Spencer Churchill and others), 7/2/1929, lot 148 = ex Richard Payne–Knight, British Museum, Naville Ars Classica V (British Museum Duplicates), 6/18/1923, lot 2981 (Payne–Knight provenance cited specifically).
NGC graded VF, Strike 3/5, Surface 2/5, “scuff,” Jenkins publication and Naville V sale data noted on the label, with Salton’s original envelope and ticket.

The coin comes originally from the collection of Richard Payne–Knight, who donated his holdings to the British Museum in the early 1800s prior to his death in 1824. An aristocrat, classicist, aesthete and politician, Payne–Knight travelled the “Grand Tour” beginning in 1767 and much of his collection must have been assembled in the second half of the 18th century. Some of the coins he donated to the British Museum were among the duplicates sold in the Naville V sale of 1923, and this piece was included and specifically noted as being from his collection. It is a coin that surely was acquired in the latter 1700s and has had a distinguished history ever since.