Anastatius & Justinianus Byzantium

added 2 more Byzantine emperors to my small collection:





Please show your coins of Anastatius & Justinianus

 

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Those are very nice coins @Andres2 ! Here are my favorite Anastasius and Justinian "Big Ms".

 

Between the reigns of Anastasius and Justinian, there was Justinian’s uncle Justin. I suspect your anecdote about Anastasius’ choice of successor refers to him. Justin was illiterate when he joined the army, but he had served as Tribune and Consul, and held the exalted rank of comes excubitorum, which was indeed commander of the imperial bodyguard, by the time he succeeded Anastasius. Personally, I question whether he was still illiterate by that time.

He did soon associate his nephew Justinian with him as imperial colleague, and there are some uncommon solidi showing the two men enthroned together on the obverse. Sadly, the Hrefn collection lacks a specimen.

Here is Justinian himself.

Love your bronzes.

 

I'm on my phone now so I can't post my pics but keep in mind that the parsimonious Anastasius left 23 million solidi in the treasury upon his demise!

 

Anastasius and Justinian:

 

Andres, Nice pick-ups . Are you going to remove any of the incrustation on the Justinian follis ? Pictured below is my crusty Anastasius follis. Click the image for a larger view.

 

Just finished removing most of the encrustation:

 

A small module Anastasius AE23mm 7.79g

 

Andres, Nice job ! It looks much better .

 

William Warden had a high price on this follis at the Boston Coin Show 23 years ago. When I saw it I immediately coveted it, but his asking price was as high as for a solidus! Happily I had some coins he was willing to accept in trade. I no longer recall what I swapped with him, but this coin ended up coming home with me. It is my only large Byzantine bronze, and I have no regrets.

 

That's a superb example @Hrefn

 

Anastasius

Justinian

 

Anastasius inherited a dysfunctional coinage with only a tiny 1-gram AE4 coin and gold coins, with no convenient denominations in between. He reformed the copper coinage in 498 by adding in a range of higher denominations, including the "small module" "M" 40-nummi piece. It wasn't 40 times the weight of the 1-nummis, so there was discontent with it and a second reform in 512 produced the well-known (and more common) "large module" "M" pieces (still not 40 times the weight, but closer). Here is a image showing their relative sizes.



The top coin is 8 mm, the middle is 25 mm and the bottom coin is an impressive 35 mm.

For more about Byzantine coins, see: http://augustuscoins.com/ed/Byz/index.html

 

Thanks for the explication and cogent demonstration, @Severus Alexander. This would make a good OP. --In nine lines! Who Knew?!?!!?

 

Cool pick ups, @Andres2 ! Great.

I have very few AEs from the Eastern Romans:


BZ Justinian I 527-565 CE AE Folles 30mm 17g 40 Nummi M monogram


BZ Anastasius I 491-518 AE Post Reform Folles M monogram

 

Great seeing you around again, @chrsmat71 !

 

Nice to stop by for a visit and see my old coin buddies! Hope you all are doing well!

 

It would be interesting (at least to me) if a thread were started showing the
different byzantine rulers. Wouldn't mind seeing the different years where applicable.

 

Nummus coins in general tend to be far rarer than the large and attractive folles.

I don't really collect Byzantines, but I did find this tiny Anastatius 1-nummus in a large lot.



Since the M-follis seems to be the most common collecting focus, here's my I-follis (10-nummus) of Justinian to shake things up a bit.


And for good measure may as well post my best M-Follis of Justin (close enough to Justinian?)

 

See here:
https://www.cointalk.com/threads/beautiful-byzantines.352446/page-2