Each of these standards were used in multiple places throughout the Mediterranean region. However, the so-called Attic standard, Corinthian standard, Aiginetic standard and other standards defined the proper weight of each coin. The coinage systems were not entirely the same from one place to another. The coins of the Greeks were issued by a great number of city-states, and each coin carried an indication of its place of origin. In the Mediterranean region, the silver and other precious metal coins were later supplemented with local bronze coinages, that served as small change, useful for transactions where small sums were involved. The Chinese coins, however, were a different concept and they were made of bronze. More or less simultaneously with the development of the Lydian and Greek coinages, a coinage system was developed independently in China. These early Greek silver coins were denominated in staters or drachmas and its fractions ( obols).
As Greek merchants traded with Greek communities ( colonies) throughout the Mediterranean Sea, the Greek coinage concept soon spread through trade to the entire Mediterranean region. In these neighbouring regions, inhabited by Greeks, coins were mostly made of silver. stamped lumps of metal of a specified weight, quickly spread to adjacent regions, such as Aegina. The coins of Lydia were made of electrum, which is a naturally occurring alloy of gold and silver, that was available within the territory of Lydia. The earliest coins in the world were minted in the kingdom of Lydia in Asia Minor around 600 BC. Silver drachma from the island of Aegina, after 404 BC