THE COIN COLLECTOR - World eBook Library

UNIQUE OR REMARKABLE COINS
and attractions, beyond the fact that these qualities
often render rarity and beauty, or excellence, con-
vertible terms. The most splendid examples of Greek
workmanship and art may be seen, for instance, on a
bronze coin obtainable for a few shillings in the highest
state of preservation ; and, again, they occur on the
Syracusan dekadrachms or medallions, which are cer-
tainly costly, but are not very uncommon.
In the Greek Series, the pieces falling within the
present category, if they were exhaustively enumerated,
would prove a considerable body, distributed over the
large numismatic area to which ancient Hellas extended.
But we are dealing only with such extreme specialities
as may appear to deserve an independent section. For
instance, it will be perceived from a perusal of the
Historia Numwum that in the archaic electrum coinage,
so widely prevalent at one period, many unique examples
are preserved in the English or French national collec-
tions, and that there were special issues of money, like
that of the exiled Themistocles at Magnesia, of which
not above two or three specimens have descended to us.
Again, the Macedonian dekadrachm is as rare as most
of the coinage of that power after the period of Alex-
ander I. and the Archaic era is the reverse ; and the
coins of Bactria, once almost unknown, and very imper-
fectly so when Wilson published his Ar'iana Ant'iqua
in 1841, are at present abundant, with certain excep-
tions—those exceptions of a somewhat momentous
kind. For we have, appertaining to this rather
fascinating succession of currency, illustrations of both
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