Rand

Breathtaking coins, @Tejas! I have none to match their rarity and historical importance 😒 There had been a few ealier series of Western coins following Eastern style. For 'series' I mean they were produced from multiple dies. I have none of them - too many gaps in my collection. A couple of examples: https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=1520465 From 1926 Viviers Hoard, Viviers, Ardèche, France. https://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb449792749 From 1804 Alise-Saint-Reine (Alesia) Hoard, France.

I like @Tejas idea that the minging of the @Hrefn coins could be related to payments to Huns. This would mean payments to Attila. I am thinking aloud about what we know about these coins and possible attribution implications. These coins - imitate Eastern Solidi - of high metal quality and content - of high manufacturing quality, based on the flans, borders, strikes, centring - the style of die images is different, looking mildly 'barbaric' - their legends have mistakes, but the quality of their execution seems good The high quality of the coins does not match the inferiority of the style. Gold coins played an important role in the taxation system, and during the period, their minting was concentrated in the capital. Coins from other mints (e.g., later Zeno solidi from Antioch) were mostly emergency issues. It seems unlikely that the imperial court would take lightly initiatives of unauthorised minting of substantive gold issues. Even if a city were under siege, the payment would likely be agreed upon and delivered centrally. Die production is much faster than coin production, and using the stock of imperial dies (modified if needed) was likely if the situation was dire. Would it not be easier to produce and deliver coins from the capital? There is data on die manufacturing for other mints in early Byzantinum time, even for much longer distances from the capital (Alexandria, possibly Sicily under Justinian). Setting up a local, high-quality minting, which would also refine, assay, and QC would be a significant undertaking. This would only make sense if local leaders wanted to make payments that the central government DID NOT authorise. This is possible but seems unlikely. In support of Tejas hypothesis, striking different gold coins for large external payments is not unique. We have an extensive example of a later lightweight solidi. It is possible that the Imperial government wanted the payment money to be excluded from the usual tax collection process and the trade within the Empire. The changes in the style would make the coins recognisable and impossible to use within the Empire's borders. I cannot see how rare these coins are without a die analysis (I am unaware of one). A single hoard can bias conclusions with rare coins unless reasonable die projections are made. If @Tejas theory is correct, these coins must not be found within the Empire, especially in Asia Minor and should be identified within territories controlled by Huns. This may be difficult as many of those territories are part of modern countries that restrict international trade of local finds (including Ukraine), and coins appearing in Western Markets may not have a reliable provenance.

Typical Ravenna solidi of Valentinianus III have a distinct dot at the left shoulder, similar to the imitative coin above. The Visigothic solidus of @Hrefn does not have it, so an imperial solidus was a more likely prototype. Imitative coins with signs of circulation had been long produced in Eastern Europe, even before the Germanic tribes and Huns. I do not see why people of the multiethnic groups that shaped these tribal nations would not have had a monetary need for coins in the V-VIth centuries.

This also gives clues about the 491-492 ANASTASIVS PERP solidi attributed to Thessaloniki. These solidi are identified by the lack of an officinae letter and two stars on reverse. Below are my two examples. These solidi are about four times rarer than similar solidi from Constantinople, which is not unexpected. However, the projected die number is much higher for Thessaloniki solidi than for Constantinople solidi. There were even suggestions that Thessaloniki mint ignored the change from ANASTASIVS PERP to ANASTASIVS PP, which likely happened on 01/09/492 after the indiction cycle. Several Western mints followed the change, and I see no reason why Thessaloniki would not. I think these coins were mass-produced during 491-492 to pay the Ostrogoths engaged in the siege of Ravenna and tributes to other tribes. This is supported by the fact that the two coins with known find provenances are from Gotland and Slovakia (route to Gotland). A third solidus from the Stockholm collection has no provenance record but is likely to be a local find. However, I could not explain why some dies deviate from in style (the third coins below, not mine). To meet the demand, some of those coins were possibly produced by irregular craftsmen, possibly outside the Thessaloniki mint - similar to the Theodosius II solid above. Roma Numismatics Limited. Auction 12. 29/09/2016 Fritz Rudolf Künker GmbH & Co. KG. eLive Auction 60. 26/05/2020 Stack's Bowers Galleries. Public Auction of U.S. Gold, Silver & Copper Coins, U.S. Paper Currency and World Gold & Silver Coins. 09/03/2006. NOT MINE

This does make sense! Apart from the style and typos, the coins are of good fabric and metal (from their look). One possibility is that they were produced in borderland towns with previous minting traditions (e.g., Serdica, as a random example). New mints/workshops are also possible, of course. Parts of Gothic tribes were serving Huns, which may give the wrong impression that the coins were Gothic produce.

It is beautiful and amazingly well-preserved for its age. Would it also be among the earliest paintings that gave origin to the later tradition of painting on a board or canvas?

A very nice coins, @Hrefn. Official coins of the period are well executed, and deviations are uncommon. So, it is pretty certain it was made outside the imperial mint. Their attribution is even more difficult than later imitative coins (Zeno-Justinian), as these early coins were early experiments with the minting by the migrating tribes and thus were even rarer. While there is no certainty, one way forward could be moving backwards from the better attributed later coins to earlier coins, trying to link design. I am glad @Al Kowsky showed his Zeno solidus, which has a style of later Anastasius solidi often attributed to Burgundians and the style is also similar to the shown CNG coin of Theodosius, all of which could have been produced by the same people. The @Hrefn's solidus is even more difficult to place. It may be interesting to look for similar coins in Scandinavian colllections.

Thank you very much for showing the photos @DonnaML! It looks it was a really nice collection and a nice day out. I would love to go their one day.

By leaving alone, I mean to ignore past auctions. I will continue to use it for what it is for. It is my favourate auction platform.

Thank you, @SimonW. I was referring to the list of closed auctions on Biddr (auction name and date only) https://www.biddr.com/closed. I see on the list many dealers I do not know. The coins I am interested in (Anastasian gold; I bought a few through Biddr) are well covered by ACSearch, and it is not an issue if I miss some on Biddr that are not in ACSearch. There would be very few. My worry is that if I do not take note of the completed auctions (name/date) that do not have relevant coins, I will not know about this in the future if they are mentioned somewhere. I know nothing about web scrapers; I had to Google about them today. I should have phrased better my earlier sentence: 'Past auctions are listed on Biddr, but manually recording them one by one takes a lot of time, and I do not know how to automate this.' There are 165 pages of completed auctions, and it would take ages to record them one by one manually. If attempted, I doubt that taking manual notes would classify as use Web Scrapers, but I will leave Biddr alone to avoid any possibilty of wrongdoing.

Dear @Tejas. Thank you, and hugely appreciated. In this case, what about Rome mint solidi under Totila? Unfortunately, I do not own any of these coins. This is a well-attributed (in my opinion) solidus of Baduila/Totila to Ticinum from the BM. There is a die-match in Musei Civici di Torino, published in Arslan EA. La monetazione Magistra Barbaritas i barbari in Italia, Milan, 1984. . https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/C_B-7553 © The Trustees of the British Museum. There is this solidus in the BM. It has a different style and has PF and COMOB. It is attributed to Ticinum by BM and Metlich. I am unsure about this for the reason we discussed before. However, this crude-style solidus does not belong to the same series as the well-executed tremisses attributed to Rome under Baduila/Totila. https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/C_B-12345. © The Trustees of the British Museum. Now, there are four solidi of this PF-COMOB type, all in private collections. They are from four obverse and two reverse dies. They are very similar to Rome solidi under Theoderic but still clearly deviate in style to suggest a separate issue (later?). They are of good style. Also, their borders resemble the tremisses discussed. I provisionally attributed them to the same mint as the two tremisses, so possibly Rome under Baduila/Totila? https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=541513 https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=1015027 https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=8598874 https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=5705305

Thank you. This is a very important point. I need to be double vigilant on when taking notes about the occurrence of publicly announced events becomes scraping. I do not keep any information from Biddr outside my Watch list on their account, so this would not be an issue this time. To be clear, I was referring to legitimate means of obtaining such information, either from Biddr owners or any authorised third parties, with any charges as appropriate. Do you say that such information cannot be (legitimately) obtained, or are you unaware that it can be obtained?

On a side note, is there a way to get a list of past auctions from Bidder? Bidder has many auctions from lesser-known/smaller dealers. They only offer a few coins of my interest, but being pedantic, I want to keep a record that I checked them. Past auctions are listed on Biddr, but manually recording them one by one takes a lot of time, and I do not know how to automate this.

@Roerbakmix My perspective of a non-IT person. Extracting ACSearch data is the easiest part. ACSearch is exceptionally well-designed and has a list of the covered auctions. Each year, it has about 300-400 coins of interest, which takes about two hours to copy and paste into my database. It only costs Euro 15 to get a week for price access. Although prices are of little interest to me, I tend to get access twice a year and see this as a token of appreciation to the ACSearch. Creating a suitable database has been far more time-consuming. MS Excel and MS Access quickly became out of the scope of my needs. FileMaker is easy to use, fast, and allows to keep images in the database! Storing all images in a separate folder is the correct way for a proper database. However, I tend to have many images per coin. There may be many photos of the same coin. I want to keep both the original and cropped images to help visualisation; additional images may include different parts of old catalogues or books. I copy and paste images, and the software does resizing, etc. The ability to share the data is an important consideration. I DO NOT plan this any time soon. The reason is the ownership of the images. I store them for personal use only and must consult the owner's policy to publish or share them. This may be a significant undertaking. For example, I recently commissioned photos of coins from the British Museum (which is an excellent service). If I wanted to include a photo in a scholarly publication, I would still need to pay (total combined print run and download units, prices per image ex-VAT): Up to 500 — £25; 501–1,000 — £35; 1,001-2,000 — £45, and so on. The last thing I want is to breach any ownership rights. The most consuming part of the analysis is matching the dies and die links, calculating their rates and projected die numbers, and building die charts. A good database would greatly simplify this. I am sure many on the forum from the STEM sector would easily create superb solutions, but my coding skills are basic and off-the-shelf database software, like FileMaker, is the easiest solution.

Exactly. This is how I feel and why I collect what I collect. A single thing I loved most about historical Britain was the rule of common sense. There are still bits of legislation that have routes from the time of William the Conqueror. Now, I feel Europe is becoming a society of Don Quixotes. The enormous technological progress has not changed what kind of species we are – however much we talk about humanity. Learning history tells me we are the same people as our ancestors in the 4th-6th centuries and how they moved through impending doom to resurrection.

Thank you, @Hrefn. It will do it through the Heritage, split in a couple of auctions (the coins will not have any collection name unless from before me). I really liked Byzantine coins and thought about them as another millennium of the Roman empire. I still find their coins attractive, but something is upsetting me about the long history of the Byzantines, mostly towards its end. I cannot explain this rationally.

I suppose we will have the answer when we find a third die. If you are correct, my whole theory about possible Baduila solidi will collapse. I will blame the Celator. You have amazing coins in an unbelievable state (not only on this thread). I hope to see your Ostrogothic and Visigothic collections online (or published) one day. I am parting with my Byzantine collection (except Anastasius) as I have not been adding for several years, and I am looking for another second collecting topic. A few Teutonic coins were sold for higher prices than I expected last week. My apologies to @Hrefn for hijacking the thread.

Hmm. So, in this case, are the tremisses we attributed to Rome under Baduila, not from Rome? They have PF - clearly visible on my coin, less on yours. If Baduila wanted to send a message linking his rule to that of Theodericus, it would make sense to return PF as well, the way Theoderic always did in Rome when he minted coins with the name of Anastasius. Nice coins! A couple of my coins from the Imperial series (which I no longer collect though).

I use FileMaker Pro, which is now under Claris. https://www.claris.com It is not free, but works well for my needs (probably similar to yours). I have been using it for years. I was thinking about changing to SQL (which can be free and has advantages), but I could not justify the time moving the platform. I am a Mac user, so no MS Access. You will probably require several linked tables rather than one master table if you expect sorting dies, die combinations, multiple entries per coin from repeat sales, lists of hoards, etc. This will depend on how ambitious your project is. Good luck - this is an interesting topic. PS: I am not an IT, so better options likely exist.

If I had to choose one, it would be 4) Nerva. I like the handshake. Our children may soon not know what it means in the increasingly 'no touch' society. A nice selection.

Thank you, @DonnaML Nice coins and a very interesting read. I particularly like 3. [Roman Republican No. 89], because it is beautiful.

Thank you, @Tejas. I appreciate your reply. The rarity of those unusual series supports their irregular/emergency nature and their crude styles likely indicates production outside established mints. While it is accepted that Clovis minted coins, they were minted in small series of crude coins, often with a single die pair or few dies. Clovis did not have a capital during his kingdom's expansion, his court was moving with him - many of his coins were likely produced on an as-needed basis in temporal mints following his trail. One possibility could be minting gold coins from spoils of war to allow the troops to get a share. Other tribes/bands might have had similar occasions. I agree that monetary needs were rudimental but possibly already not completely redundant, especially among the elites. It is easier to dismiss single coins, but more emerge as series. I cannot see how they can be firmly attributed, and I hope more find spots are recorded in the future. While I in no way attempt to link Goths to Gotland, the phenomenon of many Anastasian (and earlier) solidi found in the Baltic area cannot be ignored. This stopped suddenly during the Justinian reign when the Ostrogothic Kingdom collapsed. Anastasian solidi found there are unusually rich in Ostrogothic, Visigothic and Frankish types, which is unusual if the coins were purely from trade or raids. Thank you, again.

Also, if I may, I would propose an additional feature: PF for Rome - which was consistently used in Theodoric's time PP for Ticinum - these coins could have been influenced by PP used on tremisses in Milan or a possible relocation of a mint from Ravenna (I am unsure which tremisses were from Ravenna during Theodoricus, though).

I will need to read more about these Merovingian coins, thank you for pointing out.

A nice coin. I would be more comfortable attributing these to Atalaricus, Rome mint. Another way of reading the legend could be PF followed by ligatured AV and C. This way, it would be consistent with the series?