Stater

The Weidauer 131–132 attribution places this piece among the earliest phase of Greek coinage, predating the adoption of silver as the dominant monetary metal in Ionia. Electrum — the naturally occurring gold-silver alloy found in the riverbeds of Lydia — was the material of first choice precisely because it required no refining to a fixed standard, though its variable composition made trust in the issuing authority essential.

The uncertain civic attribution is genuine, not a cataloging gap. Many early Ionian staters circulated across city boundaries without the kind of identifying inscription that later coinage would carry, making definitive assignment to a single polis effectively impossible.