Tetradrachm - Alexander III Amphipolis

Price 102 places this tetradrachm among the earliest lifetime issues from the Amphipolis mint, struck while Alexander was actively campaigning eastward and requiring enormous quantities of silver coinage to pay his armies. Amphipolis became the dominant Macedonian mint precisely because of its proximity to the silver and timber resources of the Strymon valley. The city had been fought over by Athens and Macedonia for decades before Philip II seized it in 357 BC — a seizure Athenians never formally accepted.

Lifetime issues from Amphipolis are distinguished from the vast posthumous coinage by subtle die characteristics catalogued by Martin Price in his 1991 corpus.