Watch List notes:

Attica. Athens. c. 475-470 BC. Tetradrachm, 17.06g (8h). Obv: Archaic head of helmeted Athena right. Rx: Owl standing upright. AΘΕ to right, to left crescent and drooping olive branch with two leaves and two olives. Starr Group I (same obverse die as no. 10). Extremely rare: Starr knew only twelve coins in his Group I, the earliest to bear the crescent moon on the reverse, and very few new specimens have appeared. One of the most interesting aspects of Starr Group I is that the leaves of the olive branch droop straight down, as on the latest issues of Athens before Marathon, which Seltman, surprisingly, wrongly viewed as being the very earliest Athenian owls. This issue disproves Seltman's dating. Nearly EF



After the Persian Wars, Athens slowly redesigned her coinage. In Starr's first group the transition can be felt in the still archaic (not archaizing) heads of Athena that are reminiscent of the late archaic donations found on the Athenian Acropolis. At that time, Athens was organizing the Delian League in order to wage war against the dominions of the Persian Empire in Thrace and Asia Minor, but mainland Greece still had to recover from the Persian Wars, so no major actions were undertaken until the late 470s