Stater

Kyzikos, the Propontine city whose electrum staters circulated as the dominant international trade currency of the fifth century BC, sourced its metal from the alluvial deposits of the Pactolus river region. The city held no fixed type for long — Kyzikene staters rotate through hundreds of obverse designs across the series, which is why any two specimens rarely match. This practice was almost certainly deliberate, functioning as a primitive anti-counterfeiting measure in a currency that crossed hands from the Black Sea grain trade to Athenian mercenary payrolls.

The tuna on the reverse is the one constant across the entire series, the civic badge of a city whose economy ran on the fish migrations through the Propontis.