Some visuals I want to think more about. Mostly I’m thinking about Italy in the late fourth, early third century BCE, e.g. context for RRC 13/2, but this caught my eye because of very general similarities to RRC 2/1 and RRC 13/1:
This type from Tarentum is also really fascinating. Again you’ll see straight away why it caught my eye (bridled horse, like RRC 13/1), but also notice the ‘mint mark’ behind the horse, here an apulstre. There also seem to be a good number of these Tarentum obols coming on the market although most that I see have decent collection histories.
(You may notice that I”m now collecting images off coinarchives where for years I’ve been a acsearch.info loyal fan. I broke down and paid coinarchives for an academic account… I still prefer acsearch interface but subscription to CA was better value.)
Of course all these horses are profile not 3/4s profile which is a rather key feature of RRC 13/1…
There are lots of AR italy obols with Athena but they almost (?) all have a Corinthian helmet: Cumae (minted maybe at Neapolis), Alba Fucens (Pyrrhic War?), Arpi (I’ve always wondered about this mint and a connections to RRC 13/1 but that seems a dead end, pie in the sky speculation)…
But we do have this from Tarentum (again!)…
Grading, kiddos, and other research commitments all call… Must stop this line of thinking for now.
Ok, one more and then I’m really leaving it
Update Feb 2, 2020:
This last type is nearly identical to HN Italy 617 (Illustrated) of Phistelia = SNG ANS 582.
Also part of this broader conversation should be the v rare HN Italy 636 (Illustrated) = McClean 397, boar head/bridled horse head obol, c. 325-275 BCE.
Liv Mariah Yarrow 