Stater

Kyzikos held a near-monopoly on electrum coinage in the Greek world for roughly two centuries, and its staters circulated far beyond Mysia — turning up in hoards from the Black Sea coast to the Levant. The city's position on the Propontis made it indispensable to Athenian grain supply routes, and Kyzikene staters functioned as a de facto international trade currency throughout the fifth and fourth centuries, trusted precisely because the city's electrum alloy maintained a consistent natural composition derived from local sources.

The type attributed to Von Fritze 208 belongs to the later phase of the series, when Kyzikos was navigating the pressures of Persian satrapal authority while preserving its mint's independence long enough to outlast the Athenian empire entirely.