Solidus turned Hyperpyron? Mysterious Maurice Coin - More Questions than Answers

Maurice Tiberius 23 Siliqua Lightweight Solidus, Constantinople Mint. 22mm, 4.25 grams
Reference Sear 481...except mine is scyphate?



This coin is quite interesting. It is a normal Maurice Tiberius solidus with one exception: it is concave. Normal solidii are as flat as can be yet this coin is quite clearly cup shaped. At 4.25 grams and 22 mm, it is consistent with other lighterweight solidii of 23 siliquae.

It is not clear how or why this coin is scyphate. Under 6th century mint practices, such an error would be impossible. Curved Byzantine coins don't arrive until half a millennia later. That would point this roundness to being post mint damage, acquired after entering the public market. To make a normal solidus curved in the 6th century, while perhaps not invalidating the currency, would certainly raise suspicion in an economy only using flat gold coins.

This leads me to suspect two possibilities in how this coin became curved. The first, perhaps less likely of the two, is that the coin was found hundreds of years later and "crimped" to better fit in a byzantine economy filled with curved hyperpyron. Such a transformation would be possible due to the gold coins having roughly the same weight over a millennium. With a solidus made concaved, it could better fit in with other hyperpyron. However, one wonders that if the finding and reusing of a solidus in the 11th century or onwards occurred, then wouldn't it be easier to just use the (flat) solidus' gold as bullion or melt down and restrike the found solidus into the currency of the day? The second possibility is that this coin was made scyphate to fit some sort of jewelry design. The explanation here would be that a curved solidus might have been more attractive to the owner for some reason than a flat one.

The coin does have one or two spots on the edges with a small dip. This might be evidence of mounting and thus support the jewelry theory or could be remnants from the process which turned this coin from flat to curved. The solidus has passed through the hands of at least one auction house and a few dealers so it would seem to have consensus in regards to authenticity. I reached out to Warren Esty a while back and he was very helpful in being able to get me into contact with a kind Byzantine professor named Mike who said that he was aware of one other curved solidus, an issue of Justin II from HJB. It would seem to me that for whatever reason these two solidii are curved, perhaps they were "converted" by the same source. Its an odd coin for sure and poses more questions than I can find answers too. I haven't been able to find anything else like it online. Has anyone seen anything like this?

 

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Very interesting coin and almost unique? I don't know how you would actually turn a coin that was flat into something concave. Is it possible that it was re-struck in the 10th/11th centuries using an uninscribed die? If that were the case the portrait and legends would have been rendered flat I suppose. So I am stumped.

 

T.E. It's entirely possible that the original solidus had been clipped, & a modern day jeweler realizing this turned the coin into a scyphate coin. My late brother Henry, who was a skilled jeweler/metalsmith did similar things to old coins using leather mallets & leather covered iron forms without distorting the images on a coin.

 

Would there be any definitive signs of this? Also, would they add metal back onto the coin? The weight for this is correct for the type

 

I have a Romanus I follis that looks like someone did something similar..

 

Seems like using an uninsceibed die would be more trouble than it was worth

 

T.E. A light-weight solidus should have a star in the right field as your coin appears to have, however, the metalsmith who hammered out this form may not have known this. One thing that makes me suspicious about your coin is the lack of doubling as is seen on most scyphate coins like the coin below.


Scyphate coins were struck at least twice in order to get a complete image on both sides, & visible doubling is usually obvious on the convex side. The lettering on traditional gold scyphate coinage is usually much smaller than seen on flat coinage.
The lettering on your coin appears to have the typical size proportionally as you'd expect to see on a solidus of this period. I sold the M. Tiberius solidus pictured bellow a long time ago for comparison.


If a solidus has been hammered into a different form you'd expect to see a loss of detail without distortion of images as your coin demonstrates. Sending your coin to NGC or David Sear for authentication seems like the smart thing to do .

 

Were the Scyphate coins struck in the same fineness of gold as the solidi. Somewhere I got the idea that they were alloyed more so a conversion to fit the new style would seem to devalue the coin.

While we may never be certain, I see Al's brother's answer as most likely.

Deformation with leather would not cause the doubling as would doublestriking but the reverse top shows what I would accept as artifacts of the later reshaping with leather or wood. It strikes me that the scyphate coins would have looked better had they been struck flat and cupped afterward but this would be too much work to do for the regular production.

 

Do you know of any authentication firms which operate online? I am a but apprehensive about sending my coins away somewhere

Also the doubling of dies would only occur if these dies were struck scyphate. They almost certainly were originally struck as flat and then later bent so I wouldn’t expect to see that here at the same rates found on later Byzantine coins which were struck with curvature

 

T.E., I don't think any serious authenticator would put their reputation on the line without physically examining the coin . I've sent coins to NGC & David Sear without regrets or fear of losing the coins.

 

Gold coin debasement began in the reign of Michael IV, AD 1041, to 20 K. Under Romanus IV, the fineness went from 18 K to 16 K