Philippi
Tetradrachm circa 356-345, AR 14.29 g. Head of young Heracles r., wearing lion skin headdress. Rev. ΦIΛIΠΠΩ[N] Tripod with three handles; from the two handles at the sides, two fillets ending in three bunches. In field above, laurel branch and in field l., club and in exergue, HPA. Traité IV 1186 and pl. 324, 18 (these dies). Le Rider pl. 93, 8 (this coin illustrated). Bellinger, Philippi in Macedonia, ANS MN 11, 21 (this coin listed).
Very rare. Of lovely style and with a wonderful old cabinet tone,
surface somewhat porous, otherwise about extremely fine

Ex F. Schlessinger 13, 1935, Hermitage duplicates, 604; Hess-Leu 7, 1957, 178; Leu 7, 1973, 131; Sotheby’s 21-22 June 1990, Hunt, 354 and New York XXVII, 2012, Prospero, 287 sales. From the Jameson collection.
Philippi, near Mount Pangaeus, was to the Macedonian kings what Laurium had long been to the Athenians – a seemingly inexhaustible source of wealth; the only difference being the mines at Laurium produced silver, and those near Philippi yielded both silver and gold. The Pangaean mines had been exploited in earlier times by Thracians, Athenians and Thasians, only to be claimed by the Macedonian king Philip II (359-336 B.C.) early in his reign. Before Philip’s intervention the city was known as Crenides or Datum, but in 356 Philip renamed it Philippi. He greatly enriched and improved the city, which he repopulated and made a ‘free’ Greek city within his kingdom. At the time Philip II claimed the Pangaean region, the Thasians were working the mines and striking coins with the Heracles/tripod design and the inscription ‘of the Thasians on the mainland’. The Macedonian issues that followed bore the same design, but were inscribed with the new name of the city. The Macedonians produced a full range of denominations – gold staters, silver tetradrachms, drachms and hemidrachms, and bronzes of at least two sizes – in what seems to have been two phases, c. 356-330 B.C., and c. 330-323 B.C. The first phase probably comprised six issues, with this tetradrachm belonging to the inaugural striking. With some confidence we may thus place it in 356, when the city was renamed. Though all gold coins of Philipi adhered to the Attic standard, the earliest silver, such as this tetradrachm, was struck at what Morkholm calls "a rather light variant of Philip’s silver standard". Bellinger believes this was done to "compete for the influence in the Paeonian region," where the standard was lower. But a lighter weight was perhaps needed to discourage their export, and thus keep them around as local currency. In either case, the silver of the second phase of Philippi’s Macedonian coinage (seemingly limited to tetradrachms) was struck to the full weight of regal silver.