Hemidrachm

Byzantion's coinage from this period reflects the city's commanding position at the Bosphorus strait, where it extracted tolls from grain ships moving between the Black Sea and the Aegean — a revenue stream significant enough to fund military operations and attract the hostile attention of Philip II of Macedon, who besieged the city in 340 BC. The hemidrachm denomination saw heavy use in small commercial transactions along this corridor.

The SNG Copenhagen and BM Black Sea references place this squarely within the well-documented archaic civic series, though die studies by scholars of Thracian coinage have noted considerable variation in flan preparation across the type.