Croesus of Lydia put the world's first pure silver coins into circulation, and this sixth-stater came out of that mint at Sardes. His engravers separated gold from silver for the first time, giving merchants two metals of known purity instead of unpredictable electrum. Cyrus the Great ended the experiment in 546 BC when Persia took Sardes and the king whose name still stands for wealth. Coins from that short reign are the direct ancestors of every silver coin struck since.

The obverse carries the confronted foreparts of a lion and a bull, the royal badge of Lydia, with the lion's mane rendered in raised pellets and its jaws open toward the bull. Bold relief keeps the muzzle, eye, and shoulder of each animal well defined across the center of the flan. On the reverse sits the bipartite incuse, two oblong punch depressions driven into the metal by the hammer. Struck by hand on a thick, rounded planchet, this piece shows the irregular shape typical of the earliest coinage.

NGC graded this sixth-stater Extremely Fine with a Strike of 4/5 and a Surface of 2/5. The devices stay strong for a coin roughly 2,500 years old, while the fields show the granularity and light earthen tone expected of ancient silver. Much of the surviving silver of Croesus comes weakly struck or off center, so an example with this much detail in both animals stands out. For those seeking a well-struck example of the first bimetallic coinage, this sixth-stater delivers. The coin pictured is the exact coin you will receive.

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