Æ18 - Gordian III ΟΔΗϹϹΕΙΤΩΝ

Odessos, the Greek colonial city on the Black Sea coast of Moesia Inferior (modern Varna, Bulgaria), maintained a vigorous civic bronze coinage through the Severan and Gordian periods precisely because the Danubian frontier demanded constant troop provisioning. Local bronze filled the small-change gap that imperial silver never adequately covered in the region. Gordian III's reign saw some of the last civic issues from Odessos before the city's autonomous coinage ceased entirely — a casualty of the mid-3rd century administrative and military pressures that ended provincial bronze striking across much of the Balkans.