Stater

Kyzikos, the Propontis city-state that dominated electrum coinage production from roughly the sixth through fourth centuries BC, issued staters on a near-industrial scale that served as the dominant trade currency across the Black Sea littoral and into the Aegean. The city's electrum was locally sourced from river deposits, and Kyzikene staters were trusted precisely because their alloy composition remained remarkably consistent across centuries of production — a monetary reliability that made them acceptable as far east as the Persian satrapal courts.

Von Fritze's typology remains the standard reference for this series. Type 81 falls within the earlier portion of the fifth-century sequence, before the tuna fish reverse tunny became rigidly standardized.