Struck at the sanctuary of Zeus at Olympia, these coins were produced not by a city-state but by the religious administration of the Games themselves — one of the few instances in the Greek world where a Panhellenic sanctuary functioned as an independent issuing authority. The 126th through 130th Olympiad spans a period when the Eleans had reasserted control over Olympia following decades of conflict with the Pisatans, who had briefly administered the sanctuary and its coinage in the early fourth century.
The BCD collection remains the primary reference corpus for Olympian coinage; Leu Numismatik's 2021 dispersal of that collection established most of the current typological framework for attributing these small silver fractions by die linkage.
Struck at the sanctuary of Zeus at Olympia, these coins were produced not by a city-state but by the religious administration of the Games themselves — one of the few instances in the Greek world where a Panhellenic sanctuary functioned as an independent issuing authority. The 126th through 130th Olympiad spans a period when the Eleans had reasserted control over Olympia following decades of conflict with the Pisatans, who had briefly administered the sanctuary and its coinage in the early fourth century.
The BCD collection remains the primary reference corpus for Olympian coinage; Leu Numismatik's 2021 dispersal of that collection established most of the current typological framework for attributing these small silver fractions by die linkage.