The coins of Syracuse in ancient Greece are coveted for their beauty and the high-quality workmanship of the dies.

Stack’s Bowers Galleries in January presented a pedigreed and signed Kimon silver decadrachm minted around 405 B.C. graded Numismatic Guaranty Co. Extremely Fine, Strike: 5/5, Surface 4/5, with NGC recognizing its fine style.

The obverse features a charioteer driving a quadriga while the reverse has the head of the nymph Arethusa with her hair in a braided net, adorned with a prominent earring and a pearl necklace. It bears the letters KI, the signature of Kimon, who engraved the dies.

It sold for $108,000 on Jan. 13.

Stack’s Bowers added, “A timeless classic in terms of elegance and artistry, the engraving of Kimon is always prized among advanced collectors of the ancient world, as it reveals more of a realistic nature to portraiture, as opposed to the somewhat more idealized representations of his contemporaries, such as Euainetos.”

Its provenance includes sales in 1933 and 1922, representing just over a century of documented history.

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