Watch List notes:

Attica, Athens. Tetradrachm; Attica, Athens; 490-485 BC, Tetradrachm, 16.87g. Close to Seltman-361 (A236/P302)When this coin first appeared it had a flatly struck, somewhat damaged nose. In recent times the nose was restored by a skilled artisan, like a 17th century painting. This issue almost never comes with an obverse this broad and an owl this sharp. It has to be one of the earliest of the Persian War issues, almost all of which were struck on globular flans frequently missing large portions of the detail and badly centered though correct in weight. This is the reason that Charles Seltman and the scholars who followed him for the next fifty years thought these coins were the first issues of Athens, struck by the so-called Civic Mint, rather than those that followed. EF