Watch List notes:

Greek coins

Mysia, Cyzicus. Stater circa 500-450, EL 15.95 g. Triton swimming l., holding wreath in l. hand; below, tunny. Rev. Quadripartite incuse square. von Fritze 126. SNG von Aulock 7305. Rosen 502 (these dies). SNG France 275 (this obverse die).
Extremely rare. Good very fine
Triton, the son of Poseidon and Amphitrite, makes an appearance on early electrum staters and hectai of Cyzicus. This mythological creature, like the Centaur, the Sphinx, Scylla, and the Minotaur, was a hybrid creature with both human and animal features. The identity of the creature on this stater, however, has not always been taken assuredly as Triton. His most familiar objects are a trident and a conch shell, whereas this creature holds aloft a wreath. In his great work of 1887, William Greenwell described this creature merely as a "bearded human figure naked, the lower part ending in the tail of a fish...the left hand is raised and holds a wreath or ring...". Though he drew comparisons to Dagon and the similiarly composed creature on the coins of Itanus, Crete, Greenwell reluctantly proposed that the creature was Triton. Five years later, in the British Museum catalogue that incorporated Cyzicus, Warwick Wroth also expressed uncertainty about the identity of the creature, though he moved a step closer to calling it Triton and he described the object it held as a wreath. Finally, in his 1912 corpus of Cyzicene electrum, von Fritze described the creature as Triton holding a wreath, an identification that has held fast since, including in the key modern works by Brett, Jenkins, Levante and Amandry. In the 2nd and 3rd Centuries A.D. – quite remote from when this stater was issued – Triton makes numerous appearances on Cyzicene civic bronzes, typically being shown upon the prow of a galley, blowing into his conch shell.