Stater

Kyzikos, the Propontic city on the southern shore of the Marmara, issued electrum staters in a near-continuous stream from the sixth century well into the fourth, and the series functioned less as civic coinage than as a trusted international trading currency across the Greek world and beyond. The natural alloy of gold and silver from the Pactolus region gave each piece a composition that varied slightly — a fact Kyzikene merchants apparently absorbed without issue, since the coins circulated by weight and reputation rather than precise fineness.

The type catalogued under Von Fritze 107 belongs to the mature archaic phase of the series, when the reverse tunny fish — the city's persistent guarantor mark — was already a well-established authentication device recognized from the Black Sea to the Aegean.