Imperial Greek Coins Before Imperium?

As I understand it, "Greek" coins aren't considered "Greek Imperial" unless they (a) have a Roman emperor's name or portrait on them, and/or (b) there is sufficient evidence to date them to the period after the acclamation of Octavian as Augustus. Prior to that, Greek coins are still considered "Greek", even if the city that issued them was technically under Roman rule at the time of issue. This is mainly because, in most circumstances, the pre-Imperial Roman occupations of Greek cities left surprisingly little evidence in the coinage itself.

Greek cities within the Roman sphere were divided into two groups: "allies" whose coinages continued more or less as they had done in pre-Roman times, and "enemies" whose coinages abruptly ceased after Roman annexation because the Romans revoked their coinage rights. The pre-Imperial style coinages of some "allies", such as Athens, continued well into the Imperial period.

The confusion surrounding the phrase "Greek Imperial" has led to a growing movement in numismatics to label the series "Roman Provincial" instead.

They certainly look "different", but they don't specifically look "Roman" - the main indicators of which (to my mind) are using either the name/portrait of the emperor or the use of Latin rather than Greek letters.

There are a few coin series, such as that of Athens, which used neither the imperial portrait nor Latin letters. In these cases, you'd have to use the 27 BC cutoff date to somewhat arbitrarily divide the continuum into "Greek" and "Roman Provincial" coins.

The other alternative for such series is to simply consider them all "Greek".