Æ24 - Trajan ΝΕΙΚΗ ϹΕΒΑϹΤΗ, ΑΜΑ (in l. field)

Amastris, founded by the niece of Darius III after Alexander's conquest reshaped the Pontic coast, retained unusually strong civic pride in its coinage well into the imperial period. The city had been cobbled together from four earlier settlements — Sesamus, Cytorus, Cromna, and Tium — by its Achaemenid-born founder around 300 BC, and that consolidated identity showed in the persistence of its local mint through successive Roman administrations. The ΝΕΙΚΗ ϹΕΒΑϹΤΗ type, associating Nikē directly with imperial authority, was a common flattery under Trajan, whose Dacian victories gave such imagery genuine political currency rather than hollow ceremony.