Ancient Silver Coin, Opinions Needed - Update Weight

Who wouldn't ! Well I suppose he still has his detractors in some places. In point of fact his memory lives on in parts of Afghanistan for being quite the ruthless conqueror. Alexander was responsible for a very bloody counter insurgency campaign which tied him up for several years and gained him little.
Most of the rest of us heard all about the 'Great' stuff and thus he gets legendary status.

The first coin I 'owned' was a slightly damaged Alexander drachm given to me by my brother in the summer of 1977. I was as pleased as punch with the gift !

Has anyone pointed out that his coin has a straight legged Zeus? Maybe a life time, early posthumous issue. WOW it might be worth a little more than you thought.

Wow this is amazing!
I would definitely pay hundreds of bucks for it.

It would be a 'good price' to pay ! As it has been polished it does have less desirability to many collectors. I have not purchased one for over 30 years. The last one which I no longer have I paid $100 for and it was a bit rough although not polished. You won't go wrong under $200. By the way ...... I am a proud 'cheapskate'!

The "M" at the bottom of the coin and the monogram under the throne identify this as an Alexander lifetime coin from the "Babylon" mint. Babylon is in quotes because for now these coins are placed at Babylon but it's possible they were made at the Susa mint. Even Martin Price conceded this. There's just not enough certain information on these. Personally I think in time evidence will be brought to light that they were made in Susa.

If you don't have access to Martin Price's reference book on Alexander's coins, search wildwinds or acsearch.info using Alexander and Babylon as search terms you should find examples with similar mint marks. But keep in mind there was a huge output of these Babylon coins. So you will find many different marks but the "M" with that monogram are specific to Babylon.

These coins, including the one posted, were minted c. 325-323 BC. Again, at Babylon or possibly Susa.

At one time I focused on Alexander's lifetime coins from Babylon so I have a few of these and I'm very familiar with them.

I went ahead and purchased this coin today. I know it has some condition problems .. but I really like the cool factor.

Tenacious thank you for posting some very interesting information.

And yes there is a edit option. Look at the top of your post, there should be a icon that looks like a paper and pencil. I think there is a time limit on this edit function.

Yes, lifetime coins are usually more valuable. Would you want an Alexander coin made during his lifetime or sometime after he died? Most collectors would want the former. And hence the price/value goes up because of demand. But it's not a 100% of the time rule.

Here's a couple links about manufacture:

http://www.classicalcoins.com/page103.html

http://www-scf.usc.edu/~ciccone/htm...oduction.htm

Thanks for pointing out the Edit button. I must have been looking at someone else's post when I was looking to see if there was an Edit function available. And of course I can't see the Edit button on others' posts.

I like this link .. thought it would be a good one to add to this thread

http://coinsoftime.com/Articles/Coi...e_Great.html