Rand

I have tried to gather any literature sources and archaeological facts about the Theoderic's Italian wars. There is very little information, and publications, when cited, lead to the same sources.

It is generally accepted that Visigoths joined Theoderic, which could have been in 489 (as in Wiemer's book on Theoderich) or the summer of 490 after Odoacer defeated Theodoric at Faenza. In so doing, the Visigoths helped force Odovacer to retreat to Addar River, where he was defeated in August 490. We do not know how many Visigoths were dispatched or whether Alaric II led them personally. 

We know Gothic kingship did not stop Ostrogoths from joining Atilla to fight the Visigoths. Visigothic support to Teoderic is thus unlikely to be a charitable demonstration of kinship and more likely a paid-for arrangement, possibly by desperate Theodoric after being defeated by Odovacer. Considerable payments were expected, potentially with territorial gains (of which we know little).

My speculations: As Burgundians were advancing to Liguria between 10/489 and summer 490, it would make sense for Visighoths to secure Arle, the reachest city in the region and the capital of the Gallic province under Theoderic after 511. The campaign needed considerable resources and payments before advancing to Italy. This could be the time of minting coins with Zeno's name. The coins in the name of Zeno and Anastasius are from the same series but have some stylistic 'step up' differences. In contrast, Anastasian coins progress through a very close style (with some die links) from ANASTAS-IVS PERP to ANASTAS-IVS PP to ANASTA-SIVS PP. I think there could have been a small gap between them, with minting possibly restarted after payments were received following the 490 defeat of Odovacer. Visigoths's presence in Italy was still needed during the siege of Ravenna till 493. It is possible that after this, Arle was returned to Theoderic, and further minting was relocated to Toulouse and later, in 507, to Narbonne (for the principal mints).

There were three and possibly four Western series during 04/491-08/492 (ANASTAS[I]VS PERP) potentially corresponding to the different mints under Visigoths (coins related to your Zeno solidus), Burgundians (e.g., my top two coins above), and rare Italian style solidi (with features of earlier and later solidi from Rome, Milan or Ravenna, which makes them hard to place). Only Burgundians produced PERP tremisses, which started the Victoria Palm Wreath series and later transitioned into the typical Burgundian series.

I agree about the gaps with Burgundian coins. Even for the Anastasian series, I cannot trace their continuity throughout. 

Below is another coin, which might be Burgundian.

VAuctions. London Coin Galleries Auction 3. 10/11/2016

Congratulations, this is a great set of beautiful examples!

This is a nice coin @Tejas. I watched the auction, but they did not have Anastasian solidi in the "Migration period" section. 
I am of the same opinion that these Zeno solidi are of the same series as the Anastasian solidi above and linked to the Theoderics war with Odovacer. The Mare Nostrum Hoard produced a few nice examples, including yours, and was likely compiled soon after the war.
I also think they were not minted in Toulouse. Because of their good style, fabric, and abundance in The Mare Nostrum Hoard, they were more likely to be minted closer to Italy in a city with minting traditions. The series must be extensive, given the many used dies and pseudo-officinae letters. I have not tried die analyses for the Zeno solidi, but the current projections for Anastasius are 29 obverse dies (8 known dies) and 110 reverse dies (10 known dies)! I am sure the number will be corrected downwards as more coins emerge, but this was undoubtedly a considerable issue.

The issue includes Anastasius solidi, which rules out Syagrius, who was dead before 491 and makes other Roman enclaves unlikely candidates.

Where could it be? There are different Anastasian solidi, which later evolved in the lettered Burgunidian issues. Lyon is a likely mint if Gundobad and Godigisel jointly minted solidi and tremisses from their spoils of this war. It is not impossible that Godigisel minted their own coins in Geneva, as there are two different styles of Burgundian solidi and tremisses from the same period. Below are my two PERP early solidi attributable to Burgundians.

Roma Numismatics Limited. Auction 27. 22/03/2023

Roma Numismatics Limited. Auction 12. 29/09/2016

Arle could be a candidate mint for the Zeno-Anastasius solidi discussed above. This would explain their good style. My current impression (speculation only) is that coins were minted in Arle for the needs of the war by the Visigoths, and the minting was moved further to Toulouse with coins of inferior style (my example for comparison).

Mike Vosper. 2017.

11 minutes ago, NewStyleKing said:

That is how numismatics advances, not by secretly squirreling info away

I fully agree, and advances in scholarship are indeed on the minds of many specialist collectors. Still, getting evidence from a hypothesis may take a lot of time. More than one coin is needed, and it could be years before another surfaces. Firing away publications of hypotheses and speculations is one way of knowledge sharing, but some collectors may seek a more conclusive stage. It is for them to decide. 

There is no suitable emoji - 'sad', for these stories. 
I feel grieving after losing bids in auctions, knowing that a second chance is unlikely anytime soon or ever. This is nothing compared to losing the coins we love, whatever force led to this. Some exceptional coins are shown/described above.

17 minutes ago, NewStyleKing said:

An unknown coin from an unknown findspot from an unknown area from an unknown ancient society

My assumption: the winner and the underbidder were not bidding randomly and had a reason to target the coin.

My speculation: Even though this specific coin lacks the mentioned attributes, specialist collectors may be aware of similar examples and their relation to find spots, likely minting authority, and events surrounding minting these coins. The coin may be a valuable ‘linkage example’, helping reconstruct old stories.

My wish: To know the reasons and the story.

A very nice coin @Hrefn. Congratulations!

I have not found a new book on Carolingian coins, but I am reading (well, listening) to this book to learn more about the period before diving it into its coins. The periods is so full of events that shaped the Europe and eventually the World the way they are now.

Heart of Europe. A History of the Holy Roman Empire ©2016 Peter H. Wilson

23 hours ago, Kaleun96 said:

You of course need to do some data cleaning beforehand

For typical data projects, data cleaning takes most project time (80% has been quoted).

Yes, we referred to different ML/AI uses - I referred to AI as an universal solution of die analyse - my view the technology is not ready for this yet.

We both agree that it is helpful, in some cases, for issues when many similar dies were used. Athenian tetradrachms are a good example of an issue where an ML/AI approach is desirable and may be the only solution. There is no point or possibility of training an AI/ML model for EID MAR aureus when only three or four examples are known.

There will be a few situations when ML/AI may struggle and will need additional input from researchers - when:

• Similar dies were used for gold and silver issues, such as a few aurei and denarii, but only black-and-white photos are available.
• Similar styles were used on coins of different diameters (some late Roman Bronzes)
• The same dies were used for coins of different thicknesses, for example, some thalers and their fractions/multiples. 

https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=1478082

https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=3166387

https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=2708751

The above is now an issue for analyses of preselected images of coins of the same type. 

1 hour ago, Heliodromus said:

That is normally a step that might be used during training of an image classifier, for example if the goal is to develop a classifier capable of recognizing coin types.

Yes. This is correct. I have been referring to the broader using of AI as a solution for die analyses and classification questions in numismatics. AI will help many individual tasks withing this ambition. 100K+ types of antient coins is one of a major challenges.

Please note, the cited study used 'visual validation' as the grand truth (please see my AI [an eye] tool above). Applying the method to Nero's obverses makes sense to me (>2000 images for 1135 denarii). It would be less useful for multiple reverses, which could be easier to handle manually. Each of the coins passed manual labeling (this time selection as a particular type of obverse). Imagine doing this for all antient types.

I showed these coin photos before. Humour aside, I need to know if this is the same coin or not for die number projections. There are no other coins known to me of this variety 'helmet with a cross on PERP type'. The seller did not have info on the provenance. If this is the same coin (which I think it is) a bonus would be a proventance to a famous Ratto sale.

Could the proposed AI method help?

Thank you @Kaleun96 and I do agree with your points.

AI can be and surely will be helpful with die studies, but not in a similar way like, say, in medicine. Apart from data access, the major challenge is the nature of coins as the object of AI.
Unlabeled AI tools are unlikely to work: 
We do not just want to know the number of dies - we know them sorted by types and varieties and exclude fakes and objects that look like coins but are not.
Coin images will need some labelling, starting from 'this is an ancient coin' but ideally having a well-labelled training dataset detailing individual types. And here we have 100k+ ancient coin types for labelling! This contrasts with the output of often a small number of dies for a particular type. Developing an AI model may take far more time than doing this manually (of course, there would be template models to use).

Also, there is a finite number of dies for ancient coins, which will not increase once they have been documented (not any time soon). Once a die list is known for each coin type, like some Syracuse masterpieces, do we need AI to link a new coin? A dealer or museum would add labels, and a statistical tool would update the die projections.
Photo images do not have an agreed standard and would be much more difficult to use than, say, retinal images or mammograms. This may be solved, but it would need a good skill set.
I hope I do not sound like an AI sceptic. I am not.

Amazing!

Wow! This is a real treasure.

This belt buckle would not be worn by an ordinary woman, it must have belonged to royalty or high nobility.

4 minutes ago, John Conduitt said:

If there are 1000 coins it's impossible.

Actually, sorting 1000 coins manually has not been a big deal after I worked out a set-up for type-varies-die records. I have sorted more than 3000 coins of Anastasius from about available 10000 records. About half of the records still need to be sorted due to continued data collection. Sorting coins is fun, but getting records is far more time-consuming to do meticulously. I have c. 14,000 records of auctions, books, museums, and so on, which I have checked for those coins. Many of them have not been or are no longer online, and a few are from museums without permission to publish without further approvals/payments.

14 minutes ago, Kaleun96 said:

A lot of those points would apply to manual die analysis using only photos too

As I said, this was my reflection on my (manual) die studies, so they all apply to manual studies.

Web scraping is easy, and lots of illegal scraping is going on. You would have to respect the rules of image owners, who are likely to forbid this and get their permission. But even if you ignore the rules, you will not be able to access many coin repositories that need personal access or are not online at all. Many catalogues and books have not been scanned and, if so, may not be free for scraping but free for manual studies.

My thoughts are about the current state of AI, and I am sure it will be a useful tool as it evolves.

My favourite AI tool for die studies - sadly only works on my own coins.

PS. This post is meant to be humour. It does not mean a loop is an AI tool - it is not.

Thank you for pointing out this work; it is interesting.

I wish the AI approach could solve the problem. It may help in the future, but it is unlikely at the present state of development.

Reflection from my (humble) die analyses

• Getting images/records is far more time-consuming than die-matching itself.
• Some coins are damaged, and there is not enough surface to identify dies.
• Photos could be of inadequate quality.
• Dies could be repaired, with repaired dies looking more like a different die.
• There are often multiple entries from the same coin, and it may be challenging to be sure if the old photo of a cast is a different coin or the same but affected casting and cropping.

While the analyses are interesting, a major objective of die studies is to have a documented list of all produced dies (and their combinations) as a numismatic reference. Their number on its own is exciting but of lesser importance. If the AI methods produce individual die lists, they would still need manual validation.

The tools I have tried so far did not work particularly well.

This year I also see fewer coins of my interest - cannot even comment on the price trend. However this is not the first time when this happened and the following year (or later in a year) everything was back to normal. Last year was exceptionally plentiful in my area of interest.

One may speculate that metal detector finds may slow down. Hard to say. The UK PAS may give some insight on the find trends.

I do agree and it may be for the best that there are not so many collectors focusing on them. There are not many of those coins around.

Truly amazing coins - in both rarity and quality!

Coins on this thread can outmatch some books.

... found another book, by Egidio Ranieri. The book follows the view of Kent and attributes multiple coins with value marks to Ravenna. The text does not reason the attribution. Only PP coins are listed, so the PF variety was either not known to the author or attributed to Rome.

Prompted to go back to English books…

The 2013 edition of Hahn’s book (in collaboration with Metlich) does not seem to mention the die study or a reference to it. The PF variety is not listed or mentioned. The presentation of Italian silver is made as an argument of Kent’s opinion that both Rome and Ravenna minted silver with value marks.

 Generally, Hahn’s reasoning is interesting. The reduction in weight in 552 is linked to changing to Byzantine standard, which makes sense. Silver with value marks continues under Justin II (Volume 2), which supports the view that minting of coins with value marks continued throughout the Justinian I period. Some lines are arguments are hard to follow with images at the end of the book.

 MEC 1 does not cover these coins. Its photos are of very poor quality.

I do not have relevant coins, so show books to add colour to the post.

Thank you and very interesting. I certrainly need to re-learn German!

Has Hahn given details/reference for the die study? As it was done before 1973, there is likely a 3-4-fold number of the coins available for analysis now.

These are all good theories, @Tejas. I do not have a strong oppinion without seeing more data.

Coins with value marks may be a transitional issue minted across both Rome or Ravenna or a Rome issue minted for a more prolonged period. I note many varieties of silver coins of the period that do not have the value. They vary considerably in style, number of stars, etc. and have different fraction values (1/8, 1/4, 1/2). Some have a style similar to Ostrogothic coins, which may indicate their earlier issue. Their small size makes the weight measured by dealers more susceptible to relative errors.

The answer would need a registry of these coins, with accurate metrics (weight and diameter) across denominations from Italy and Constantinople (with further odd denominations) and even Carthage. This should help to see if the weight change happens over time or if coins were produced with different weight standards simultaneously. 

Another lovely coin of yours, by the way.

I see ‘sea waves’, which would fit into the naturalistic nature of some other symbols. (This could be due to too much beach walking in the winter season, a sign that it is time to return to hills and mountains).

The attribution of PF coins to Rome and PP coins to Ravenna appears quite strong. 

• There was a plausible reason for the return of PF to coins in Rome under Baduila (as we discussed).
• Ravenna changed to PP early in the Theoderics period, before Theoderics closed the mint.
• Ravenna mint was likely re-established by the Byzantines and followed Constantinople, where PP was used.
• The weight difference could change over time but also fits the possibility of two different mints following different standards.
• Mint in Rome had a long tradition of being controlled/influenced by the Senate, before and long after - well into the Papal period.

Out of interest. When a refund is given let us say 10 years after the purchase, would it be the amount paid or also include some compensation for inflation? Otherwise the collector's losses may be significant.