Stater - Lysimachos Kolchis imitation

The Bastarnae occupied a frustrating middle ground in ancient historiography — Germanic by some ancient accounts, Celtic by others, and almost certainly a mixture of both, pushed into the Pontic steppe and Danube delta regions by the migrations of the late Iron Age. Their gold coinage imitates the staters of Lysimachos, the Thracian king whose issues remained the prestige currency of the northern Black Sea region for centuries after his death at Korupedion in 281 BC. The prototypes were so trusted that local rulers from the Carpathians to the Caucasus kept copying them long after the originals had ceased.

Kolchis imitations form a distinct regional subgroup, struck progressively further from the original Greek die style with each generation of copying.