My Favorites of the Year Bensi ( Simon )

I especially like the two electron trachy 7 and 4 with well struck detail compared to their type on average.

I do not have a #8 but the situation reminds me of my Manuel I type with St. George. I have two that between them have most of the detail but neither by itself shows the legends I wanted. I never assigned the second one a number but the two share one listing until I find the one I like (unlikely). This was not a high point in workmanship.

 

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These coins are simply out of this world.

 

I Like them all. Great year!

 

Some great coins Simon. Nice haul for the year.

 

Congrats, @BenSi ! Great pickups for 2020. Your wife done good!

 

I'm not an ancients collector but I surely enjoy looking, reading, and learning about them. Thank you all, enjoy Happy and Safe Holidays.

 

They're all very appealing, even though I'm not a Byzantine coin collector and all I really know about them is what I've read here on CT. My favorites are the Cappadocia Ariarathes VII Ar tetradrachm -- that's some birthday present! -- and the tremissis from Anastasius I. (I've thought about buying an example or two of Byzantine gold coins for a long time, because it's always been the least expensive ancient gold that's readily available. I should have bought some back in the 1980s, when I remember looking at a tray of Byzantine gold solidi at an antiquities dealer's shop, all of them under $200 apiece.)

 

...Total Nostalgia Shock. What I have to remember, on a more anecdotal level, is how much more $200 was to yours truly back then. (...I was still subject to regularly scheduled rent emergencies --that's where a Whole Lot of my 'second collection' went.)
...But Really, @DonnaML, why not let yourself branch out a little? Not that the sheer depth of your engagement with Roman Republican --just for the most obvious example-- is anything less than 'Stop This Train' jaw-dropping.

 

Still very affordable and very available, this being the smallest of denominations cost under300, several more around 200. The Byzantine market has been getting more competitive lately.
I have also noticed more books regarding the empire but as historical fiction. If you are interested in the time period of 11th century I suggest you read Eileen Stephenson. Home - Eileen Stephenson , Her short stories caught my attention and she wrote a nonfiction book on the 11th century.

 

Interesting link, @BenSi. ...I'm hard-wired to spend more on academic history, at greater length (with footnotes and bibliographies --collectively, the Gift that Keeps On Giving). But for one, um, really key century, this looks like a serious complemement to Norwich.

 

Thanks! I really don't want to derail this thread, but the answer to your question is that I have limited funds to spend on coins or anything else non-essential (although I would argue that during the pandemic, coins have been pretty essential to my mental health!). So every dollar I spend on branching out beyond my interests, which aren't really that narrow in the first place -- Roman Republican, and, to a slightly lesser extent, Roman Imperial and Provincial, as well as Greek coins every now and then -- is a dollar I don't have to spend on my primary interests. For which there's an inexhaustible supply of coins available!

Besides, my own personal opinion is that -- to me, and me alone -- most Byzantine (and medieval) coins, although they can have a lot of charm and historical interest, are somewhat cruder than, and aren't as beautiful as, the ancient coins I do like to collect. Admittedly, that can be true of a lot of Roman Provincial (especially Roman Alexandrian) coins, and late Roman Imperial coins, as well. But Byzantine and European medieval coins are also, again only for me, a little too universally demonstrative about the symbols of a religion to which I don't belong, and which, at the time those coins were issued, had an often adversarial outlook towards members of mine, who happened in some cases to be my own ancestors. For the same reasons I admire medieval European art (and, after all, I live right near the Cloisters, which I've visited regularly since childhood) but wouldn't necessarily want to own it, I can admire the Byzantine and European medieval coins that people show here, without wanting to buy coins like them. Or could have looked at, and been tempted by, rows of inexpensive Byzantine gold coins 35 years ago -- when $200 for a coin felt like a lot more than it does now, but was still manageable on occasion -- without ending up buying any.

 

Thank you, @DonnaML, for all of that.
I vividly remember your having grown up in range of the Cloisters, let alone the Met and MOMA. Which registers from here as Total, albeit benign, Craziness.
But what I'm also getting is that your disinclination to venture far into Byzantine and other European medieval is operative not only on esthetic levels, but on ones which are only more profound, by orders of magnitude.
As far as esthetics, it's like, The Defense Rests. Guilty, As Charged. :<}
And even for an adherent, collecting this stuff really takes maintaining a certain base level of vigilance about the ways that the Christian visual rhetoric was put to toxic use, of a broadly political nature.
I hear you. Please, Consider yourself Heard.
...And where collecting is concerned, Everyone needs priorities. On Any given budget. Thank you, kind of integral to the process.

 

Thanks. It looks like a very interesting website. And Byzantine history does interest me. A class in Byzantine History that I took in college, taught by the well-known scholar Deno Geneakopolos, was one of my favorite courses -- right up there with the courses on Ancient Egyptian History, Ancient Near Eastern History, and 14th Century English History (all about the Black Death, the Hundred Years' War, and the Peasants' Revolt of 1381).

 

I get it @DonnaML , I started collecting because of history, and no other reason, I started with Roman imperial and was eventually to Byzantine, not for religious reasons but simply it was a new frontier for coin collecting, a road less traveled, less books , more new finds and I also loved the idea the Roman Empire continued until 1453, making it an empire of 1500 plus years.
To be honest it would be boring if styles of art and portraiture did not change for 1500 years. However their are still similarities, coins still communicated a message , who was the ruler and the reverses have Saints with a message, waring saints is most common, much like the gods used on the reverse of earlier Roman coins. BUT Byzantine coins are like cats, they pick you , you don't pick them.

 

@BenSi, you nailed it. From here, that's true of medievals more generally.
...Along with your emphasis on collecting from history. A Lot of people have made that point here, @Alegandron being the first one who comes to mind. (Sorry, forget the post.)

 

Great year @BenSi! I really like the Antiochos VII tetradrachm and the Isaac II and Alexios EL trachy.
The S-2059 is is nice as well. Since it are the latin rulers, who are portrayed on the obverse and reverse actually? I remember seeing a trachy from Latin rulers with Manuel on it, but I am not sure if I saw it correctly.

 

Sorry i left out details. Good Morning and thank you for the compliment. Here is the Latin tetarteron.

2059 BYZANTINE, Latin Rule Half Tetarteron S-2059
OBV Figure of St. Helen Nimbate, turned slightly to the r. wearing stemma, divitision, collar-piece, and jeweled loros of simplified type; holds patriarchal cross on long shaft in l. hand

REV Full-length figure of St. Constantine turned slightly to the l. wearing stemma, divitision, collar-piece, and jeweled loros of a simplified type; holds patriarchal cross on a long shaft in r. hand and in l. , anexikakia.

20mm 2.28gm