Silver 10 Asses Gorgoneion series I: with dolphins

Populonia, on the Etruscan coast north of Piombino, was the only Etruscan city to strike its own coinage directly from locally smelted metal — the iron mines of Elba lying just offshore supplied the wealth that made these issues possible. This denomination, weighing roughly equivalent to the Greek drachm, circulated during a period when Etruscan political power was contracting sharply under pressure from both Gauls moving south and Romans pushing north.

The dolphins flanking the gorgoneion place this firmly within Vecchi's first series, distinguished from later emissions by precise iconographic positioning that die studies have now established as chronologically significant.