The staters of Lysimachus were used as trade coins of high quality, which everybody living on the coast of the Black Sea gladly accepted for small and large businesses from the 3rd to the 1st centuries BC. As King of Thrace, Lysimachus had issued large amounts of coins, among them gold staters with the image of Alexander the Great on the obverse and the goddess Athena on the reverse. These staters were extremely popular among the peoples living in the modern countries of Bulgaria and Romania – so popular that they were still common almost 200 years after Lysimachus' death: from 88 to 86 BC, the Pontic King Mithradates VI (120-63 BC) had Lysimachus staters minted to pay Thracian mercenaries whom he had hired to fight the Romans.