Stater

Kyzikos, situated on the Propontis in northwestern Asia Minor, dominated electrum coinage production across much of the fifth century BC, with its staters functioning as a de facto international trade currency throughout the Aegean and Black Sea regions. The city's natural access to electrum — an alloy of gold and silver occurring natively in the region — gave it a production advantage that few mints could match. Unlike most civic issues, Kyzikene staters carried no consistent type, with the tunny fish as the only fixed element, making each die pairing essentially a unique issue.

The specific type here, cross-referenced across Greenwell, Von Fritze, and the Boston MFA holdings, places it within a well-documented but still thinly understood sequence of archaic-to-early-classical transitional issues.