The coinage of Euesperides was always minor in comparison with that of Cyrene, or even of Barca. But its sporadic issues do have an interest of their own. At this session we are also concerned with the city, and I wish to suggest what we can learn from the numismatic evidence — not just from the coins struck there, but from the coins of other mints which have been found there.

It is preferable to speak generally of the ‘coinage’ of Euesperides rather than of its ‘mint’, for it seems certain that some of the issues bearing the city's name were actually produced at Cyrene, as indeed were also some issues of Barca. The coinage of Euesperides was always small in comparison with the older and much richer coinage of Cyrene. It is instructive that the catalogue proper of Robinson's BMC Cyrenaica requires 90 pages to list the autonomous and Ptolemaic coins struck at Cyrene, 18 for those of Barca, just 4 for Euesperides.

For Euesperides there are no archaic tetradrachms, the denomination so prominent in a variety of types at Cyrene. The earliest Euesperidean coin in BMC, a drachm of types silphium/dolphin, is assigned by Robinson to before 480 BC.