Stater - Rheskuporis IV Valerian and Gallienus

By 265 AD the Bosporan stater had shed nearly all its silver content — what MacDonald catalogs as the final gasps of a coinage tradition stretching back to the Spartocid dynasty. Rheskuporis IV maintained the fiction of Roman alliance by naming Valerian and Gallienus as co-rulers on his coinage, even though Valerian had been captured by Shapur I at Edessa in 260 and was presumably still alive in Persian captivity when these dies were cut. The gesture was political theater, not administration.

Billon by this date meant something close to bronze with trace silver. MacDonald 620/1 is among the terminal issues of the kingdom, which collapsed within a generation under Gothic and Herulian pressure.