The wealth of Croesus was proverbial across the ancient world, and this silver stater comes from the coinage that built that legend. The kings of Lydia struck the first true coins at Sardis, and Croesus refined the system into matched gold and silver staters, the earliest bimetallic currency in history. His reign lasted barely fifteen years before Cyrus the Great and the Persians took Sardis in 546 BC, so the window for this issue was short. Collectors pursue the Croeseid because it sits at the very beginning of coinage itself.

The obverse carries the confronted foreparts of a lion and a bull, the royal badge of Lydia, with the lion's mane rendered in bold raised locks and the bull's shoulder and foreleg standing in sharp relief. Both animals are well centered on the thick, oval flan, and the device definition remains strong across the high points. The reverse shows the bipartite incuse, two rough rectangular punch depressions that served as the mint's mark of authority. This simple punched reverse is typical of the earliest coinages, before engravers filled both sides with designs.

NGC graded this stater Very Fine with a Strike of 5/5 and a Surface of 4/5, a strong pairing for an archaic silver issue. The metal shows even gray patina with lighter high points, and the strike is full enough that both animal heads read clearly at a glance. That combination of a maximum strike score and a well-preserved lion-and-bull pairing is what separates a good Croeseid from an ordinary one. A welcome addition to any collection of archaic Greek or Lydian coinage. The coin pictured is the exact coin you will receive.

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561-546 BC Lydia Croesus Silver Stater NGC Very Fine 5x4