Didrachm

Phasis was the principal Greek emporion at the eastern end of the Black Sea, planted at the mouth of the river of the same name in what is now western Georgia. The city's coinage is extraordinarily rare — the entire known corpus numbers only a handful of specimens — which reflects either a very short minting episode or severely restricted output serving a specialized mercantile function rather than broad circulation. The references themselves tell the story: when a coin appears in Regling, Boston MFA, and the SNG Black Sea corpus simultaneously, it is because nearly every known example is being cataloged individually.

Kolchis in this period was known to the Greeks primarily through myth and through the amber and precious metal trade funneled down from the Caucasus interior. The didrachm denomination suggests ambitions beyond a purely local economy.