Neocaesarea's civic bronze coinage is distinguished by its use of a local Pontic era dating system — ΕΤ ΡϘΒ marking year 192 of that reckoning, which anchors this piece to 255–256 AD. The city had been granted neokorate status, the right to maintain an imperial cult temple, and the ΜΗ ΝΕΟΚΕϹΑΡΙΑϹ formula advertising that honor was a deliberate civic boast on coinage rather than administrative notation. Under the joint reign of Valerian and Gallienus, provincial mints across the Greek east continued issuing civic bronzes with considerable autonomy, though the system was collapsing — Rome's third-century crisis would effectively end most provincial bronze production within a decade of this piece's striking.
Neocaesarea's civic bronze coinage is distinguished by its use of a local Pontic era dating system — ΕΤ ΡϘΒ marking year 192 of that reckoning, which anchors this piece to 255–256 AD. The city had been granted neokorate status, the right to maintain an imperial cult temple, and the ΜΗ ΝΕΟΚΕϹΑΡΙΑϹ formula advertising that honor was a deliberate civic boast on coinage rather than administrative notation. Under the joint reign of Valerian and Gallienus, provincial mints across the Greek east continued issuing civic bronzes with considerable autonomy, though the system was collapsing — Rome's third-century crisis would effectively end most provincial bronze production within a decade of this piece's striking.