Tetradrachm Thasos Type

The Thasian tetradrachm became the dominant trade coin across the central Balkans from roughly the late third century BC onward, and Celtic tribes in Thrace and the middle Danube region began producing imitations almost immediately after the type gained regional dominance. These are not crude copies — early examples track the Thasian prototype closely, and the progressive stylization seen across the series reflects generations of die-cutters working from coins rather than from the original, each step removing the image further from its source.

Göbl's classification of the Celtic Thasian imitations into distinct die classes allows reasonably precise attribution within what would otherwise be an undifferentiated mass of similar coins. Class II of plate 46 indicates a mid-to-late phase of the series, when abstraction of the prototype had already advanced considerably.