Stater - Apollas

Abdera, the Thracian coastal colony founded by refugees from Teos in the mid-sixth century BC, produced some of the most artistically ambitious coinage in the northern Aegean during the fifth and fourth centuries. The city operated a distinctive magistrate-naming system on its silver issues, rotating the name of a presiding official — here Apollas — alongside the ethnic, a practice that now gives modern scholars a rough chronological handle on an otherwise difficult sequence. May's die study remains the essential reference for sorting these issues, though the attribution of individual magistrates to specific decades within the 395–360 range is still debated.

Abdera was sacked by the Triballi around 376 BC, an event that almost certainly disrupted mint activity and may account for gaps in the die sequence around that point.