1/2 Shekel - Hamilcar Barca

Gadir — modern Cádiz — was among the oldest Phoenician settlements in Iberia, and its mint became the financial engine behind Barcid military operations following Carthage's humiliating loss in the First Punic War. Hamilcar crossed into Iberia in 237 BC with the explicit goal of carving out a territorial and revenue base to rebuild Carthaginian power, and the coins struck here funded that campaign directly. His young son Hannibal reportedly accompanied him on this crossing.

The ACIP 545 attribution places this issue firmly within the earliest phase of Barcid Iberian coinage, before the mint output expanded under Hasdrubal and later Hannibal himself.