Silver 1 As Octopus series: seven tentacles

Populonia, the only Etruscan city known to have struck its own coinage directly from locally smelted ore, drew on iron deposits from the nearby island of Elba. The octopus series is among its earliest silver issues, and the choice of a cephalopod motif — shared with several Greek coastal mints — suggests commercial contact with Magna Graecia rather than purely indigenous iconographic tradition.

The seven-tentacle variant is catalogued separately from the eight-tentacle dies, a distinction that matters: these are not damage or wear anomalies but deliberate or at least consistent die differences across identifiable groups.