Watch List notes:

JDL Collection Part II: Geek Coins
ASIA. LYDIA UNDER PERSIAN DOMINATION.

SARDIS, Stater 546–520,

Persic standard, AV 8.05 g.
Obv. Foreparts of lion right and bull left, face-to-face.
Rev. Two incuse squares, side by side.
Literature
Traité II/1, 401, pl. X, 2
BMC Lydia 6, 31
SNG von Aulock 2875 SNG Lockett 2983
I. A. Carradice, op. cit., pl. X, 6
G. Le Rider, op. cit., pl. V, 6, 8
K. Konuk, op. cit., 31
M.-M. Bendenoun, Coins of the Ancient World, A portrait of the JDL Collection, Tradart, Genève, 2009, 31 (this coin)
Condition
Rare. Struck on a broad flan and unusually complete, extre- mely fine.
It was during the reign of Croesus, the last king of Lydia (650–546 BCE) that coinage underwent its first revolution, only decades after it was invented. Probably to mitigate fluctuations in the amounts
of gold and silver contained in the first electrum coins, the famous Lydian king established a bimetallic monetary system based on a fixed, official rate between gold and silver. Since the Artemesium "hoard" hidden during his reign included no coins of silver or gold (apart from seven small ingots of silver), the creation of this bime- tallic system must be contemporary with or slightly posterior to this burial and has thus been ascribed to Croesus. The new coins of pure gold and pure silver that modern collectors call Croesids, after Croesus, are easily recognizable: whatever their weight or metal content, they all bear on the obverse the foreparts of a lion and bull facing one another, while the reverse shows two incuse squares of unequal size and irregular surface, side by side.
Croesus' mints successively issued two series of gold and silver coins. The main monetary denominations for each series were the stater, the heaviest coin, plus its subdivisions: a half stater, one-third of a stater (or trite), one-sixth of a stater (hecte), and one-twelfth of a stater (hemihecte). The gold and silver coins of the first issue were minted according to a new, uniform weight standard that made conversion between the two metals easy. Thus the weight of the Lydo-Milesian stater, which was roughly 14.50 grams for the early Lydian coins of electrum, was reduced by 25% so that it weighed only 10.90 grams. Given the ratio of value between gold and silver at the time-roughly 1 to 13.33-a gold stater was worth thirteen silver staters plus one silver trite. And given the value-ratios between gold and electrum (4 to 3) and silver and electrum (1 to 10), the old electrum staters could be easily exchanged with the new gold and silver coins: one electrum stater was worth one gold stater or thirteen silver staters plus one silver trite.
The shift from the use of electrum to silver and gold was gradual. Subsequently, perhaps to simplify the exchange between gold and silver, Croesus had a second series of coins struck. The weight
of the new gold stater was reduced by another 25%, falling to
8.17 grams, while the silver coin, a hemi-stater, weighed only
5.45 grams, that is to say half the old silver stater. The new gold stater could thus be exchanged against exactly twenty hemi-sta- ters. However, this second series has not been firmly attributed to Croesus. An opinion held by an increasing number of numismatists attributes the issue of the "light" gold stater to Cyrus the Great, king of Persia from 559 to 530 BCE. After having defeated Croesus in 546, Cyrus allegedly continued to strike gold and silver coins in the mint at Sardis, the former Lydian capital; these coins respected the monetary type inaugurated by Croesus while adapting the weight of the gold stater to Persian economic imperatives.