Hemidrachm

Chersonesos, the Thracian Chersonese peninsula, issued these hemidrachms continuously for the better part of a century — an unusually long and stable coinage series for a region otherwise subject to near-constant geopolitical pressure from Macedonia, Persia, and the local Odrysian kingdom. The type persisted through the rise of Philip II, who eventually absorbed the peninsula into Macedonian control around 338 BC, yet the coinage continued under various arrangements well after.

The remarkable longevity of the series produced an enormous variety of control marks, making systematic die study unusually complex. McClean 4055–4056 represents only a narrow slice of the known corpus.