1/3 Stater

The early electrum coinage of Ionia presents one of numismatics' most contested attribution problems — no scholarly consensus exists on whether these pieces were issued by individual city-states, by Lydian commercial interests, or through some cooperative mercantile arrangement. The natural alloy of gold and silver found in the Pactolus River, which runs through Lydia, made standardized composition essentially impossible, and buyers in trade almost certainly weighed rather than trusted these pieces.

GCV 3460 groups several stylistically distinct types under a single number, which understates the attribution difficulty considerably.