Æ23 - Tiberius ΚΑΛΧΑΔΟΝΙΩΝ

Calchedon — the city Megarian colonists founded on the Asian shore of the Bosphorus around 685 BC — was famously called "the city of the blind" by the Oracle at Delphi, the joke being that its founders had overlooked the obviously superior site of Byzantium directly opposite. Under Tiberius the city retained its Greek civic identity and the right to issue local bronze coinage, a privilege that was never automatic under Roman administration and depended on imperial goodwill or negotiated autonomy.

Provincial bronzes of this period from Bithynia are notoriously inconsistent in flan preparation, and Calchedon issues specifically tend toward irregular casting porosity beneath the strike.