Stater

Kyzikos held a near-monopoly on electrum coinage in the eastern Aegean for roughly two centuries, and the city's staters functioned as the dominant trade currency across the Black Sea littoral and into Persia. Athenian tribute lists and temple accounts from this period record payments explicitly denominated in Kyzikenoi, a fact that tells you more about their commercial reach than any hoard distribution could. The city sourced its electrum from Lydian river deposits, and the alloy composition varies noticeably across the series — a deliberate inconsistency that Kyzikene merchants apparently had no trouble absorbing, since the coins traded by weight and trust rather than fixed fineness.