Stater

Kyzikos, a Milesian colony on the Propontis, dominated electrum coinage production in the eastern Aegean for roughly two centuries, issuing an extraordinary variety of stater types — each distinguished by a changing obverse type while the tunny fish remained constant on the reverse. The city's position on critical trade routes between the Black Sea and the Aegean made Kyzikenoi, as these staters were collectively known, the preferred currency for mercenary payment throughout the fifth and fourth centuries, referenced explicitly in Athenian naval records and Spartan campaign accounts.

The specific type catalogued across Greenwell, Von Fritze, and the major museum collections places it within a well-documented sequence, though exact die relationships across these reference corpora remain debated.