CaveBear2

Talking about eBay, by the end of 2023 - begining of 2024, a german seller sold an entire byzantine collection on eBay, mostly solidus and a few silver and electrum issues. I never asked from where they came (I suspect it was inheritance). The seller had no idea about the pedigree of those coins except for some of them that came with a certificate of authenticity from Ma-shop. I remember some pretty good deal (sorry no pictures) : * a solidus of Justin & Justinian (ex-iNumis, ex-CNG (Triton), ex-Harlan Berk) sold for 1600€ (Harlan sold it for around ~3500€); * a solidus of Justin (probably GEM MS if it was graded) sold for... 420€ (a coin from the same dies and strike quality was sold by NAC for 1000CHF a few years ago, was slabbed and sold this year by Heritage for around a grand); * a "fine style" solidus of Constantine IV sold for 500€ (ex: Numismatik Naumman, hammer 900€); * a well struck Hyperpyron of John II Comnenus sold for 400€; And a ton of other coins that sold weeeeell below their usual market price. I wish I could see such bargains again 😭, it was only a few months ago but it feels like eternity now. I also saw on eBay a slabbed follis of Anastasius, basic NGC slab, XF, "light" smoothing, no more info', no pedigree. Actually, it was lot n°900 of Triton XXVI being sold for ~1/3rd of the hammer price. I open a little parenthesis here (more like a rant) : Later, I realised that coin was first sold at Leu Web Auction 18 in December 21 along with several other Anastasius follis, all those follis were then smoothed, all of them where later sold by CNG during various feature auctions as part of the Iconodule collection, all of them got ridiculously high hammer price (for the type), CNG didn't mention the smoothing for any of them. As a result, I took a closer look at the Iconodule collection and, dear me, there is a quite a number of smoothed / tooled coins in there, sellers tend to omit those "details" 😒.

Grierson noted that the Leontius portrait on those solidus were the work of the man who also engraved the "fine style" portrait of Constantine IV and Justinian II (first reign). Always sounded far fetched to me, but why not? The style is indeed similar and those 3 types of solidus are scarse so the number of dies is rather limited and could be the work of one man.

The Mare Nostrum hoard will never be published 😭 I always wanted to know more about it because of those weird Anastasius solidus with the mint mark "T".

Currently there is many of those being sold on Ebay, I've also seen them everywhere from VCoins to CNG but they just look too suspicious. The paper is interesting and so is the conclusion : "(...) suggest that these coins were the product of a superior 13th century forger". I might buy one if it's cheap enough, just for the mystery.

Thanks for the answer, I think I will stick to the simple method before trying something more advanced 😁

This remind me I have so many coin to clean. But I don't know where to start. Just putting them in distilled water for a few months and changing the water regulary while removing deposits with a toothpick from time to time should do the trick right?

I was about to buy that coin but before that I asked some questions to the seller about its provenance. All I got for answer was a red flag : "I don't remember, all i can say is that it came from Germany". So I did a little bit of extra research and I found the coin in the "Fake Ancient Coin Report" at Forum Ancient Coins. Bummer. "Guaranteed genuine!" *sigh* Sorry everyone 😔

Late Justinian follis and early Justin II follis (facing bust) from Antioch also had garbled / absurd legends. May be the Antioch mint administrators decided literacy wasn't a priority. Those legends are attributed to unskilled workers but it never got that bad at the other mints.

Thanks everyone for your answers. @ewomack @Curtis JJ I took a (long) look at Sear 162, MIB 88, DOC type 32 and those coins are exclusively from the 5th officina (Є). May be the production of the 3rd officina (Γ) for that type is so rare the officina is unlisted. The question of the "style" remain. @ela126 Nice find, happy to see there is another specimen out there! I went through the "Catalogue of the Coins of the Vandals, Ostrogoths and Lombards and of the empires of Thessalonica, Nicaea and Trebizond in the British Museum" to learn about germanic coinnage, it's true many coins have similar style/portrait. It's also interesting the people at TimeLine Auctions couldn't decide if it was from Constantinople or Ravenna, Greek or Germanic. @Tejas Imo the engraving looks too meticulous to fall in the category you mentioned (but it's still a possiblity). I'm even more confused now 😅 PS: Sorry for my english

Hello everyone, While wandering through eBay I saw that weird follis of Justinian and I can't find any information about it in the usual reference books. I couldn't find similar dies in acsearch & sixbid-coin-archive either. The style looks unique to me and it doesn't look like a production from the mint of Constantinople (a few things remind me of some half-follis minted in Salona and that's it). If anyone know something about such a coin, I'd be glad to hear about it.