Obolos 26

BRUTTIUM. Hyporon. Circa 300 BC. (Bronze, 20 mm, 4.46 g, 6 h). Laureate head of Apollo to right. Rev. Y - Ρ / Π - Ω Tripod; cross field, M-Y. Cf. HGC 2, 1413 (arrangement of reverse legend). Cf. HN III 2269 (arrangement of reverse legend). Extremely rare city missing in most major public collections and probably unique with this arrangement of the reverse legend. Very fine.

Hyporon was a small settlement in Bruttium that only briefly struck bronze coins which copied the silver coinage of its neighbor, Kroton (cf. HN III 2177). In the past, this coinage was also associated with the Samnite city of Mystia due to the letters M-Y below the tripod. However, nowadays these letters are usually interpreted as a reference to a magistrate.

Here the M -Y is outside of the legs and placed between the horizontal division of the ethnic, a most unusual arrangement. Another unorthodox - but different - arrangement of the reverse legend is known to us from a coin that appeared in Leu (Winterthur) in 2021.