Gold 25 Asses Lion's head series I

Populonia was the only Etruscan city to strike its own coinage directly from locally controlled iron-rich mineral wealth — the ore from Elba passed through its port, and the mint operated with a financial independence no other Etruscan center quite matched. This gold issue belongs to a production period driven almost certainly by the catastrophic pressures of the Second Punic War, when Rome's Italian allies and subject cities were compelled, or simply motivated by self-interest, to contribute to the war effort in hard metal.

The 25-asses denomination is itself a curiosity — a valuation system grafted onto gold by a mint whose output was never large and whose denominations were calculated against Roman bronze standards rather than any native Etruscan accounting tradition.