I got a coin lot that I bought from Rauch today. 7 Roman coins and 2 Byzantine. The Roman coins were pretty "meh", apart from a Licinius with Sol holding the head of Serapis on reverse and a pretty nice large AE from Valentinian. The Byzantine coins, however, were surprisingly mesmerizing. Probably not to a long term collector of Byzantine coins, but to me they were. Ok, so now I'm in love with Byzantine coins. The numismatic Cupid works in mysterious ways. I have very litte litterature on these coins, though. Only "Byzantine and early medieval coins in the Hunter coin cabinet". I'm looking to get the Sear book o Byzantine coins, but I'm not shelling out 150 bucks on amazon for it. Better to wait for a bargain. Meanwhile, I would love to have recommendations of books and internet sites on Byzantine coins. I've been doing some googling, but I'm still pretty much in the dark with my coins. I believe this is a Leo IV half follis? 25mm, and 7-8g: This is an anonymous follis, but I don't know how to identify them: So, as you can see, not great coins, but they appeal to me. I have been planning to quarantine my Roman collection for a time, and focus on other areas. Think I'm going to start with the late Byzantine empire. After I have identified all my new old Greek AEs, that is.
I totally hear you. I have collected US coins for fifty years. I went to a show two years ago and became fully consumed with a Byzantine Follis. I had zero numismatic education with ancients. Only stopped at the table out of curiosity. I posted it here and I believe it was @dougsmit that translated the reverse for me, "Christ King of Kings"..... Talk about setting the hook!!...... I am still a dedicated US coin guy, but man how I do love those Byzantine Folles. And yours are beautiful! This is the website you want to visit. Everything you could ever hope to know about them. http://augustuscoins.com/ed/ByzAnon/
Thank you Randy! In return, let me guide you to an excellent podcast about Byzantium. https://thehistoryofbyzantium.com/
https://www.forumancientcoins.com/numiswiki/view.asp?key=Anonymous Byzantine Class A Folles The above is handy for Anonymous class A2 folles like yours. See #45.
YES! This podcast is GREAT! I started listening to it after I finished The History of Rome. Robin picks up where Mike Duncan left off. Can't recommend it enough.
...very collectible and should be a few in every collection..... bronze 1/2 follis of Justinian and follis of Maurice Tiberius( if i'm not mistaken, this 1/2 follis now belongs to @Valentinian
My Leo VI was one of my first Byzantine coins. They are not hard to find reasonably well struck with clear legends. There are several good books on Byzantines. I enjoy Whitting for information beyond a simple ID but find the Sear catalog useful. Neither is a good deal on Amazon last I looked but used ones turn up. Dumbarton Oaks online is free but not as easy to find things as in a book. https://www.doaks.org/resources/coins
Those are very nice examples of the types, Svein! I recently found a class A2 follis that I haven't received yet. This is the seller's image... It certainly has a good bust of Christ, but what also interested me about this coin was the reverse. As you can see, as the die became tired and the letters got mushy, the engraver went in and re-carved some of them.
Hey John. Nice coin! What puzzles me is that my anonymous follis has something like "IMSILe" on the 4th line, while all the descriptions say it's supposed to be "bASILe". Is this a common error?
See some links in my old topic: https://www.cointalk.com/threads/byzantine-coins-where-to-start.341746/ Plus this site for identification: http://labarum.info/lbr/index.php?s...Search&sf_state=&sf_ruler=&sf_mint=&sf_denom= Plus this site of Valentinian, which is a great summary that I highly recommend: http://augustuscoins.com/ed/Byz/index.html I got the Sear brand new for much less than 150 EUR; I believe around 50-60 EUR. Although if you hurry, you can find a 1,500 EUR copy (yes, 1.5k EUR) on amazon.fr.
Very nice coins @svessien , and well-struck for Byzantine bronzes. I've never really gotten into them, I have just a couple in my collection and the only photo I have is this follis of Justin II (sorry for the poor photo quality): If you want to read about Byzantine history, John Julius Norwich is the name to know. I've read his "A Short History of Byzantium" and greatly enjoyed his style and way of telling the story. He also wrote a more comprehensive three-volume history of the Byzantines, which is on my ever-expanding list of books to read someday, and some other related books.
Thank you for book recommendation. My recent purchases augurs for a change in coin direction for a while. This won't be my last Parthian. They have great appeal too
That is a good looking Parthian. I don’t have one yet. They’re a it daunting and out of my comfort zone right now. But I do like their designs.
I think they are pretty decent. A well-defined Jesus on a follis is harder to find than you think. A few weeks ago I got the following which was my first byzantine too! That's a Justinian follis of course! Big big coin, feels like a casino chip.
That is not an error but just a typeface you do not like. The b is thin and the A has a fancy crossbar but that is how that engraver made those letters. More people are bothered by the fact that this period of Byzantine Greek uses a mix of Latin and Greek letters. Note that Christ is spelled XRISTU. If you seek them out you will find quite a few different ways of making an A on the Anonymous coins. Still they did not have as many as we do on our computer fonts. I rather like the A with an upside down Y as a cross bar. The one below is almost an upside down pitchfork. To the people who read these it was just handwriting.
There is a great book on Byzantine bronzes published here: https://www.byzantine-ae.info As Doug just mentioned as I was writing this post, it's quite common for the b to look like an I and the A's vary a lot.
