Stater

Kyzikos, positioned on the southern shore of the Propontis, became one of the ancient world's most prolific producers of electrum coinage precisely because it controlled access to Propontic trade routes connecting the Aegean to the Black Sea. The city's staters circulated not as local currency but as a trusted international trading medium — accepted from Thrace to Persia — a function made possible by their remarkably consistent weight standard maintained across centuries of production.

Each Kyzikene stater carries a unique obverse type, a deliberate minting policy that makes the series one of the most varied in all of Greek numismatics. The reverse tunny fish is the one constant, marking civic identity across an otherwise kaleidoscopic output. Greenwell 144 and Von Fritze 101 place this piece within the archaic phase of the series.