Kyzikos, situated on the Propontis in Mysia, dominated electrum coinage production in the eastern Aegean during the fifth century BC to a degree that made Kyzikenoi — as the staters were known — a de facto international trading currency across Greek, Persian, and Black Sea commercial networks. Athenian records, including passages in the orators, reference them as standard units in large transactions. The city's control over regional tuna fisheries provided the economic base; the fish appears on virtually every type as the ethnic marker, though the main device rotated constantly, producing hundreds of recorded varieties.
The Von Fritze and Greenwell typologies remain the standard references precisely because the variety count is so large that no single later corpus has superseded them.
Kyzikos, situated on the Propontis in Mysia, dominated electrum coinage production in the eastern Aegean during the fifth century BC to a degree that made Kyzikenoi — as the staters were known — a de facto international trading currency across Greek, Persian, and Black Sea commercial networks. Athenian records, including passages in the orators, reference them as standard units in large transactions. The city's control over regional tuna fisheries provided the economic base; the fish appears on virtually every type as the ethnic marker, though the main device rotated constantly, producing hundreds of recorded varieties.
The Von Fritze and Greenwell typologies remain the standard references precisely because the variety count is so large that no single later corpus has superseded them.