Hrefn

The Emperor finds your interest in other Empires.......disturbing.              

@JeandAcre  Many thanks for the relevant info from Depeyrot!  The new denier came in a PCGS holder, a fact about which I have mixed feelings.  Among other constraints, I am unable to weigh it.   And I searched the coin on the PCGS look-up site, and there is no information about the coin’s mass.  

99% of my Byzantine and medieval collection has not been third party graded.    As a collector who began before the onset of slabbing, I never felt the need for it, though I am not rabidly against the practice.  For mint state modern coins it makes sense to me.   And it provides some protection if I should drop it.

@JeandAcre  I followed your advice and picked up a copy of Patrick Nouchy’s Les Rois Carolingiens de France Occidental.   Here is the listing of my new coin, a Class 2 denier of Louis the Pious from Lyon.

and here is the example in MEC as number 772.   

And here is the coin itself.

I think I did well.  Grierson states in MEC that the Class 2 deniers are not uncommon as over a thousand of them were found in two large hoards, though these were divided amongst multiple mints, with Venice accounting for a fifth of them.  (MEC 1 p. 215).  Forty different mints for the Class are known.  I am not sure how common the coins from Lyon are, and I have only found one prior sales record thus far.  That information may be in Depeyrot, but I have not located a copy of his book yet.  

Thank you again for your kind and informative post. 

The Christ portrait reminds me of this solidus of Constantine VII whose reign ended in 959 AD, even to the big jewels on the Gospel book.  

Study of Crusader coins, like the study of the Crusades themselves, is a bit like going down a rabbit hole.  You can branch off in any number of directions.  There are the coins the Crusaders brought from The West.  There are the coins the Crusaders struck in the Kingdom and associated states.  There are coins struck in imitation of those of nearby Muslim states.  There are coins of other territories conquered in association with the Crusades, such as Cyprus, and the Frankish empire and territories in Achaea.  Then there are coins of Crusader leaders, but struck elsewhere.   Shouldn’t any Crusader coin collection have a denier of Richard the Lionheart?   How about a denier of Thibault III le Comte de Champagne, whose premature death plunged the 4th Crusade into chaos and led to the fall of Constantinople?   Saint Louis, the great Crusader king of France?   And coins of the relevant Byzantine emperors, starting with Alexius I Comnenus.  Coins of the Reconquista in the Iberian peninsula, of the Norman recovery of Sicily from the Muslims, and what about coins of the Teutonic Knights?   I don’t know of any Templar coins, but the Knights of Saint John of the Hospital were striking coins until the Napoleonic conquest.  Surely, Jean de Vallette was a Crusader.  And surely, some coins of the Crusaders’ opponents should be included as well. 

Here are some Crusader opponents. 

Saw this guy outside the ER at 3 AM.   He was obviously there to give emergency fashion advice. 

Outstanding example of that issue!   Mine is more worn but the reverse was so compelling that I bought it anyway.  I have never seen a more beautiful example than yours, @Phil Davis   Kudos.   

1 hour ago, Prieure de Sion said:

* Discover coin unplanned
* Search for reasons to justify a new purchase
* Think of even more good reasons
* Present reasons to the wife
* Sobering to discover that woman doesn't really care about the reasons
* Looking for reasons that might convince her
* Cooking the woman dinner
* Surprisingly clean the flat, do the laundry, do all the manual tasks that have accumulated over the last few years
* Woman still finds coin unnecessary
* Try to convince wife with a quid pro quo (Honey, didn't you want to afford ....? Why don't you treat yourself to something nice for once?)
* Wife, exasperated, agrees to invest the household money in a two-thousand-year-old copper disc on which you can barely make out a head on the front and a creature on the back.
* Completely exceeding the self-imposed limit during the auction
* After the auction, looking for a thousand ways not to be able to pay with the joint credit card. Considerations mature to open an account in Greenland for such purposes
* Confess to wife that the copper disc has become more expensive
* Paying for every massage, every skin peeling and every cocktail for the woman on the next wellness holiday without complaining.

That's how it always works for me (roughly)...

I laugh because it is true.   I can only add:

* Try to convince wife that buying coins is really more like saving money than spending it.  (“But you never sell any” she says.)

*Last resort:  Propitiatory Jewelry.  

Sorry I have been remiss in posting to this thread, but when Byzantine coins are the focus of one’s collection, picking a favorite is rather difficult.  So I’ll just say that this coin is my favorite at this moment when I am picking a coin to post.  Plus I don’t think I have ever posted it before.  I love the opulence, the imperial majesty of Constantinopolis on the reverse.  

I do have a coin which could be claimed to be a Charlemagne lifetime issue, but I do not think of it as a Carolingian coin.  The Duchy of Beneventum issued coins which were imitative of contemporary Byzantine pieces, initially.  Later, they became more brave, and began putting their own initials, and later, their names and portraits on their coins. Two Lombardic tremisses are shown.  The first is probably from 788-792 AD, and on the reverse the Lombardic Duke of Benevento acknowledges the suzerainty of DOMinuS CARolus ReX.   The second coin is a bit later, after Charlemagne was a safe distance away, and Grimoald no longer felt the need to show subordination.  

I suspect this is the closest I will come to a lifetime Charlemagne issue.  

Many thanks.

First, a confession.   I know it is more wise to “buy the book before the coin”.   But I was weak, and yielded to temptation.  The coin was so pretty, so historic, and it was just sitting there, in the midst of an auction which had almost no Carolingian coins.   Perhaps it would be overlooked by the other bidders?   So I pondered the new reality of higher coin prices, and placed an aggressive bid.  To my absolute open-mouthed shock, I won the coin.  

Custom (or superstition) seems to dictate that we refrain from posting pictures until receiving the coin in hand.  So I will refrain from posting the seller’s pics, unless there is a consensus that waiting for my admittedly non-professional photographic efforts is an unnecessary scrupulosity.   

Which brings me to my request.  What books on Carolingian coins are worthwhile additions to one’s numismatic library?  Assume one is starting from almost empty shelves.  What are the best introductions and overviews?  Best comprehensive studies?   Old auction catalogs of outstanding collections?  Focused studies of particular mints or types?

I will start by saying I already have a copy of:

Medieval European Coinage (1) The Early Middle Ages (5th-10th centuries) by Philip Grierson and Mark Blackburn.  This book is based primarily on Professor Grierson’s personal collection housed at the Fitzwilliam Museum.  It was published in 1986 by the Cambridge University Press.  Approximately 1500 coins of Europe are featured, beginning with the earliest issues of the Vandals, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, and Lombards; other minor Germanic peoples;  the gold and silver of the early Franks through to the decline of the Carolingians;  about 30 pages devoted to Anglo-Saxon thrymsas and sceattas and another 40 pages featuring Anglo-Saxon pennies.  Each coin is illustrated in the excellent plates.  The scholarly and historical chapters benefit from the erudition of Professor Grierson as a professional medieval historian, as well as Mark Blackburn’s expertise in Anglo-Saxon numismatics. 

It is remarkable to consider that this volume deals with only about 10% of Grierson’s collection, AFTER he had divested himself of his Byzantine coin holdings.  It is an indispensable overview of the peoples and coinages described;  in my opinion the best initial book of the period.

Looks beautiful to my eye, though I am not an expert on Byzantine silver.  My impression is that lots of late Roman and Byzantine silver coins have flan cracks. The granular chip leading into the flan crack leads me to wonder if the silver is crystallized.  This would be both a reassurance of authenticity, and a bit of a concern.  If you buy it, don’t drop it.  

Despite collecting Byzantine coins for 40 years, I had never purchased a miliaresion, until this year.   Disappointment at losing bid after bid in auctions as the price of solidi has risen prompted me to essay a few bids on some silver coins, hoping to win one.  To my surprise I won 5 out of 6 bids, and a nice assortment of coins they are.  One of them is this miliaresion.  

Basil I, reigned 867-886 AD, and his son Constantine, died 879 AD.

Many beautiful and interesting coins on this thread, some serious scholarship on display as well.  I have only one coin of the London mint to contribute, unless one counts the sceat of Wihtred circa 690 AD, posted in another thread, which I believe was struck in London.  
This coin was initially an impulse buy from William Warden 32 years ago, and it was expensive.  But I have never regretted purchasing it.  Sorry about the glare in the photos.  I took the pictures in sunlight.  A different background would have served better.  You can see the remaining flecks of silver on the surface.

My avatar on the other coin discussion site.  

I have previously shown this coin on CoinTalk but have a bit more information to share. 

Julian II the Apostate,  360-363 AD     Germanic solidus.

#81 is a heavyweight 4.59 gram gold Solidus in high relief more typical of an aureus, modeled on a coin of Lugdunum.  Cf. RIC 226 (Lyon). 

Reverse legend is VIRTUS EXERC CALI  the last word meant to be GALL in praise of Julian’s army in Gaul.  

Ex: Dr. E. Poncet collection, (Bourgey, 15 March 1926, lot #71), then Triton III lot #1224 “unusual and extremely rare”;  and Leu 72, 12 May 1998 lot#542. “One of only two specimens known” per Freeman and Sear, published in their mail bid list #9 on 7/16/2003.   Purchased by private treaty from Freeman and Sear, at the NY Int’l Coin show 01/2004.

The next specimen (not my coin) known to me was auctioned by Burgan Numismatique Maison Florange as seen below.  Online auction 22-1 lot #33 on 6 march 2022 with starting bid of 7000 euro, but I believe it went unsold.   This specimen is ex:  Dr. Pierre Bastien collection who was an expert on the coins of Lyon.  It has two die breaks and a central scrape.  Both obv and reverse are die matches for the coin above.  Picture is from the auction house.  

At one time I had ambitions to collect a good run of Saxon sceattas but alas! One cannot collect everything.  The first was struck in Kent, the first Anglo-Saxon coin struck in London by Wihtred, circa 690 AD.  Series Bx.  The second coin is another Series J, type 37.  These were struck circa 710 AD.  I purchased it in 2004 from Joe Linzalone of Wolfshead Galleries.  The small diameter of these coins leads to magnified photos, which does the coins a disservice as they appear much rougher than they in fact are.  These coins appear smooth, almost glossy, in real life.  They are only about 8mm in diameter.  

Here is my single example of Chosroes II

And here is his noble opponent, Heraclius.  The evolution in portraiture is remarkable.   The first coin must have been struck early in the reign about 610-613 AD, after the success of the Heraclid revolt, and the die makers lacked a good model portrait of the new emperor.  The second coin is amazing for a facing portrait of the emperor and his young son Heraclius Constantine, who was made co-Emperor in 613 AD.  Ancient art often depicts children as if they were miniature adults, but the celator captured the appearance of a child here and on @Al Kowsky’s example above.  Heraclius Constantine is clearly a young man by the time the next coin was struck   

The next group is comprised of a solidus from Ravenna, note the thick annular border on the reverse;  two of the 3 kings solidi from Constantinople, and a tremissis from an unknown mint.  Perhaps Constantinople but I am not sure with the impressive annulus on both the obverse and reverse.  

Constantine VII with Romanus II.   circa 945-959 AD.   A nicer example than most, but the doubling of the inscription makes me want to adjust my glasses.   I never seem able to trade up to a nicer example, because the mechanics of selling are inconvenient, and buying a new and different type coin always appeals more.  And the side depicting Christ is pretty awesome.  Constantine

The Abduction of Europa, another version.  

@JeandAcre Dinna fash yerself, Laddie.  No harm, no foul.  And as you so astutely hint at, being incisive is for me a professional requirement. 

Harun al Rashid’s viziers the Barmakids were of Persian origin, and originally Buddhist, though they converted to Islam.  Jews, with their peculiar status as a nation in diaspora, were well suited to employment as diplomats by all sides.  

Here are two Abbasid coins, one from the reign of Harun al-Rashid, 786-809 AD;  and the second from the reign of the last Abbasid, al-Mustasim, reigned 1242-1258 AD.  The first is a standard dinar, citing Jafar as vizier.   The second is a heavyweight, 13.33 grams which is three times the weight of a standard dinar.  

You can see Jafar cited in the last line in the field on the dinar on the left.  

Charlemagne sent al Rashid an emissary recorded as “Isaac the Jew.”  The Caliph sent the Emperor gifts including an elephant which arrived in Aachen in 802 AD.  

Al-Mustasim underestimated the threat posed by the Mongols until he suffered defeat in Baghdad in 1258.  Various tales are told of his death, most likely being he was rolled in a carpet and trampled by either the Mongols’ horses, or by elephants.  

A denier of Charles the Bald, of Quentovic.   For which I probably overpaid, but it is a nice example. 

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The spelling on the back makes me wonder if the town name was pronounced QVentoVic  or  QWentoWic