Stater

Aegina was the first Greek polis to strike coinage on a wide scale, pioneering the "Aeginetan standard" — a weight system adopted across much of the Peloponnese and central Greece for over a century. By the time this stater was struck, the island's commercial power was already in terminal decline. Athens, viewing Aeginetan naval and mercantile strength as an existential threat, had been systematically strangling the island's trade since the 450s. The final blow came in 431 BC, when Athens expelled the entire Aeginetan population at the outset of the Peloponnesian War.

These late turtles — as collectors have always called them — were struck on the island's last gasp of independent production before the dies went cold permanently.