Hemidrachm

Kalchedon sat at the mouth of the Bosphorus opposite Byzantium, and its coinage reflects the strategic weight of that position. The city controlled passage between the Black Sea and the Aegean for centuries, extracting tolls from grain ships moving southward from the Pontic states — a revenue stream that funded its mint and its politics in roughly equal measure. The date range overlaps with the period of Spartan hegemony and then its collapse at Leuktra in 371 BC, after which Kalchedon navigated shifting alliances with characteristic opportunism.

SNG Levante 6987 places this piece within a well-documented but sparsely populated series.