TYPE Ancient Greece, Olbia (Sarmatia), ca. 400-380 BC, bronze AE9 DESCRIPTION . Obv: Laureate head of Apollo (?) right Rev: Dolphin swimming r., Greek legend below OLBI REFERENCE: cf. An 57-8, cf. LE 690 GRADING: F / F+, dark red patina, very scarce ORDER INFO: G1936, $32 A "substantial" and well above average specimen of what probabaly qualifies as the smallest Greek circulating bronze coin (with a typically oversized obverse die). The obverse deity appears to have short hair, and thus resembles more Apollo than the somewhat more customary Demeter. While the impracticality of successively smaller precious metal (chiefly, silver) fractions led to the introduction of token coinage (first in 5th c. BC Sicily, and shortly elsewhere) of substantial size, the insistence on such minuscule bronzes in certain locations remains unclear. Despite some recent finds, the type remains absent in most major published collections, and thus still generally scarce. Coupling the rather shoddy workmanship (of which this specimen is luckily not too typical) with the size, would suggest a kind of pocket change for daily needs of what was apparently a busy trading center.