Tetradrachm In the name of Alexander III, Odessos, ΞEN

Odessos, a Greek colony on the Black Sea coast of modern Bulgaria, continued striking Alexander-type tetradrachms well into the first century BC — long after the Macedonian kingdom had collapsed. These posthumous issues were a matter of commercial necessity: the Alexander tetradrachm remained the dominant trade currency across the eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea littoral, and local economies depended on its continued availability regardless of who was actually minting it. The magistrate's name ΞEN visible in the control marks ties this piece to a specific issuing official, one of the few anchors for die-sequence studies in this otherwise difficult series.