Stater

Kyzikos, the Propontic city on the southern shore of the Marmara, dominated electrum coinage in the eastern Aegean for well over a century, and these staters functioned as the primary international trade currency across the Greek world before Athens established silver supremacy. The city's electrum was alloyed to a remarkably consistent standard — a deliberate policy that gave Kyzikenoi staters a trusted exchange rate from the Black Sea grain ports to the treasuries of mainland poleis.

The tuna on the reverse — the city's civic badge — appears on virtually every issue, while the obverse type rotated through hundreds of distinct designs across the series, making attribution to a specific subtype the central challenge for collectors. Von Fritze's typology, cross-referenced here against Greenwell and the Rosen collection, remains the essential framework.