Mysia Cyzicus 550-450 BC Winged Boar Over Fish Electrum Stater NGC F Very Scarce

Mysia Cyzicus 550-450 BC Winged Boar Flying over Tunny (Tuna fish) Electrum Stater NGC Fine very scarce. .

One of the earliest coins struck, and among the rarest found of Cyzicus Electrum.

The story of the world’s first coins, seemingly introduced in the mid-seventh century B.C. were made of electrum is well known. This alloy of gold and silver earned its name from its pale yellow color, which resembled amber, called “electron” in Greek. We know it today as Electrum.

The most important issuer of electrum coins in the Greek world was Cyzicus, a wealthy port on the southern shore of the Bosporus, the strait that links the Black Sea with the Aegean. Its ideal location allowed the city’s merchants to grow wealthy from their near-monopoly on trade between Greece and the distant shores of the Black Sea.

Among the most unusual things to appear on ancient Greek coins were monsters that more often are described as mythological creatures. To people of the modern world, these creatures are bizarre and fanciful; we wonder who could have believed that such creatures existed. But to the ancient Greeks they were familiar, and they played a meaningful role in their reckoning of the world.

There are more than 180 design types in the series, some substantially more rare than others.