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MYSIA, Kyzikos. Circa 600-550 BC. EL Hekte – Sixth Stater (12mm, 2.72 g). Head of tunny left; below, tail of tunny left / Quadripartite incuse square. Hurter & Liewald III 12.2; Von Fritze I 6; Boston MFA –; cf. CN Online Type 11686 (hemihekte); HGC 8, 250. Irregular flan. Near EF.
The celebrated electrum coinage of Kyzikos began in the first half of the sixth century, and from the beginning the coinage was notable for the variety and inventiveness of its designs. These staters and fractions were regarded as gold coins and circulated throughout a large area along with the gold darics of the Persian Empire. On all of the coins of Kyzikos, large or small, was engraved the tunny-fish (θυννος), which constituted an important product in the Kyzikene economy. The long awaited corpus initiated by the late Friedrich Bodenstedt is now being continued by Maria Kaiser-Raiss. In the meantime, we must rely on the synthesis of material put together by Hans von Fritze in 1914, augmented (and corrected) by the articles by Sylvia Hurter and Hans-Joachim Liewald. Hurter studied the electrum coinage of Kyzikos for some time before her untimely death in 2008. It was her conviction that the arrangement of the coins by Agnes Baldwin Brett in the catalog of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts was the most accurate to date (reflected in the “Editor’s note” at the beginning of the article on the Kyzikene coins in Moscow and St. Petersburg in SNR 2007). Thus, the coinage of Kyzikos below is arranged accordingly.
The final winners of all CNG Feature Auction 133 lots will be determined at the live online sale that will be held on 15-16 September 2026.
CNG Feature Auction 133 – Session One – Lot 1-308 will be held Tuesday morning, 15 September 2026 beginning at 9:00 AM ET.
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