1 Didrachm Beast series: facing right

Populonia, the only Etruscan city known to have struck its own coinage directly — rather than relying on Greek or Campanian mints — produced this didrachm at a moment when the city's iron-smelting wealth from Elba was at its height. The "Beast series" facing-right didrachms are among the earliest issues from the mint, predating the better-documented lion and gorgon types that would follow in the fifth and fourth centuries.

Vecchi's classification remains the primary framework for Populonian coinage, and the tight clustering of references here — HN Italy, Sambon, SNG Firenze — reflects how intensively this scarce series has been studied relative to how few specimens survive.