A golden start to 2021

This was bought before the end of last year, but during the holiday season so the seller was on leave and I had to wait till the new year for the coin to even ship. It was a very spontaneous purchase. I always wanted an early non-cup shaped histamenon but never thought I could afford one as they tend to be pricey. Even though it is a retail purchase, I thought it was a bargain as it cost no more what most people pay for a 7th century solidus nowadays. I guess the wear on the reverse kept the price low. But in my opinion the level of detail is overall quite good and I am very happy with it. Still, it wasn't a planned purchase so I simply did not have allocated funds for it. Luckily my partner came to the rescue and she bought it for me and it didn't even take that much convincing. Well, it is an investment for our children anyway (that's what I said).



It is a gold histamenon nomisma of Romanos III, a descendant of the noble Argyros family. Yes, he wasn't of royal stock and ending up on the throne was probably bad luck for him. Constantine VIII must have trusted him greatly, so on his deathbed he forced Romanos to divorce his then wife and marry his daughter Zoe instead. That effectively caused him to become King when Constantine died. He tried to be a good ruler but wasn't too efective. Mind you, he was probably pre-occupied all the time with trying to stay alive as the Zoe he married was none other than Zoe Porphyrogenita who treated poor Romanos as a mere inconvenience during her power struggle with her sister Theodora. I wish I could get get a coin of these two sisters one day as they would make a fascinating write-up, but I would probably need to win the lottery first. Having such a wife is no wonder that he was pretty much overshadowed by her. And eventually his luck run out as he was found dead in his bath in 1034 most likely not from natural causes. The legend on the reverse of this coin says: ΘCE bOHΘ RWmAnW (God help Romanos). Before saying that this prayer wasn't answered, we should consider that in death he didn't have to put up with Zoe anymore.

Some fakes of this type showed up about a few years back, so I was careful to make sure that the dies looked legit. Byzantine histamena were probably the most beautiful coins in the known world of those times, and they influenced many later coin types. Here is my Venetian Grosso which is such an example.



Show me your coins of Romanos III, or your Byzantine histamena if you have any. They are beautiful coins and in extremely fine condition they are jaw-dropping.

 

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Old man, thank you for bringing your English sense of humour to this board. That’s even better than gold, although it’s another sweet coin you’ve gotten for...uh... your children.
Now, please make sure your old lady doesn’t go sour like Zoe, so that you can continue to be our poor old man for a long time.

 

Excellent addition to the collection...

Romanus III or Michael IV A.D. 1028-1041

AE Anonymous Follis, 28mm, 12.7 grams

Obverse: EMMANOVHL, facing bust of Christ, wearing nimbus cruciger, pallium and colobium, holding gospels with both hands, to left IC, to right XC

Reverse: Cross on three steps with pellet at each extremity, in fields IS-XS/BAS-ILE/ BAS-ILE (Jesus Christ, King of Kings)

Reference: SBCV 1823

 

P.O.M., Great write-up & coin ! A few of this coin type have passed through my hands over the years. I did keep one pictured below .

 

Thank you for this nice compliment. Even though I have been living in the UK for a while, I am actually not a native speaker. The English native speakers of this forum have probably noticed my sometimes bizarre syntax. From my various postings here it shouldn't be hard to guess my heritage

Nice anonymous type I still have to add to my collection. As a side note, Michael IV was another unfortunate husband (and former lover) of Zoe's. He did much of her dirty work for her but at least he didn't suffer the same fate as his predecessor.

Can't blame you, it is definitely a keeper. It shows how awesome this coins are when in perfect condition. Didn't you once buy a fake of this type as well? It was a good looking coin, I always wondered how you spotted that it was a fake one.

 

P.O.M., I'm embarrassed to say I bought 2 fakes of this coin type ! I've posted both of the fakes on CT. This coin type has been heavily counterfeited for at least 75 years .

 

Congratulations on the addition to your collection. My knowledge on coins of that century is limited, so no gold for me, just copper. I picked this up near the end of last year.

 

@BenSi's example inspired me --more than a little ironically-- to post mine.

Looks like some overstriking on the obverse. For the prototype, I've never figured out the likely culprit.

 

Pretty nice coin, I still need Romanus III/ really tough to get MS. Here is one from the Basil II aka the "Bulgar Slayer" with his brother Constantine VIII

 

Sweet example, @panzerman.
All I have are anymous folles attributed to him and Constantine VIII.
Except, you Scored with that one.
...I have to like the more and less modern versions of the Greek title, 'Bulgaroktonos.' (Please see a recent post by ...Yike, I can't remember.... Has it been that kind of year?)
A couple of centuries later, the Bulgars were back in force, harrying Latin-occupied Constantinople, newly sapped of military personnel and other infrastructure by its recent sacking. ...Thank you, by the people who were ostensibly charged with its preservation, in its then-current state.
...As Mark Twain said, 'history doesn't repeat itself, but it sure as (expl. del.) rhymes.'

 

It is hard to tell on your example (and actually in most), but the most likely candidate is your friend the Bulgar-slayer. You see most class B follis were striken over class A2 ones. This is how scholars have determined who is really who in the whole series of anonymous follis. It was a common practice to strike the new coins over your predecessor's in those times, so by examining the overstrike patterns they could figure out the likely reign period of each class type. You can read about the established order of the types and the overstrike pattern's in our co-cointalker's @Valentinian site.

http://augustuscoins.com/ed/ByzAnon/index.html

I love examining this new histamenon of mine. Comparing it to the previous solidi, I can see that the increased diameter has allowed for extended artistic creativity which the Byzantines certainly took advantage of and destroyed the myth that they could not carve coin dies in an artistic manner. The disadvantage of course was that the histamenon is a coin prone to bending which probably was one of the reasons we got the later solution of the hilarious cup-shaped coins. I wonder though if the extended flan was the only reason they decided to move to the histamenon from the solidus. Anyone has any theories?

 

Good question. The only contemporaneous gold issues in the neighborhood that come to mind are Fatimid. That might have been one influence, along the lines of similar modules in silver, from Ayyubid dirhams to Armenian trams to Venetian grossi, a mere couple of centuries later. Surely someone here knows more about those than we do....

 

Very nice example, perfect actually. And a great sample to use for explaining how Byzantine art works. Many people say that they don't like Byzantine coins and that the art is caricature-like. Even though this is a fair point, they wrongly assume that people in that period lost the necessary skills to produce works of art of classical style. The reality is that both styles existed but the classical form was deemed unnecessary and perhaps vulgar to be applied on such as sinful creation as money. The Byzantine empire went through a long period of debate on what is art (see iconoclasm) and one of the main arguments is that it would be regarded scandalous to have realistic portraits of emperors especially on money. @panzerman 's coin is a perfect example of both artistic styles co-existing on the same object. On the obverse, we see a beautiful rendering of Jesus Christ that would satisfy most people's taste, but on the reverse we see the abstract style used to portray a generic caricature-like image of the emperors in question.

 

Wow, @Only a Poor Old Man, thanks for pointing that out! Both aesthetics, right there on one coin.
I remember an interview of the harpsichordist and musicologist Gustav Leonhardt, in which he pointed out a similar phenomenon in the transition from 'Early' to Baroque music. In Italy in the early 17th century, there was (hope I spell this right) a 'Prima Pratica' and a 'Secunda Pratica' --right, simultaneously. Like the combination of late Gothic lettering and Renaissance profiles on the later coins of Henry Vii.

 

P.O.M., Pictured below is the last fake of a Romanus III Argyrus coin I bought in 2019. It is the very rare variety of the Virgin Mary without a halo. Pictured below it is another example struck from the same dies that I spotted on the Forgery Network website. These are high quality fakes .


Romanus Argyrus III, AD 1028-1034, Constantinople Mint. AV histamenon nomisma: 22 mm, 4.47 gm, 6 h. Sear 1820. FAKE.


Forgery Network fake example of Sear 1820.

 

Do these fakes end up only on e-bay sellers? The auction houses would spot these I hope.....

 

...Well, @panzerman, where fakes are concerned, ebay is your One-Stop Shop. That's for sure.
@Al Kowsky, am I making this up? Compared to @Only a Poor Old Man's and @Al Kowsky's examples, is the style of these fakes Just a Little below par?

 

@panzerman i a. Trying to complete a collection of the 12th century, one of my biggest hurdles is Andronicus gold coinage I do not know what is real and what is not. A series of fake Andronicus coins hit the auction houses and many proved to be fake after sale. I do not want slabbed coins nor do I have complete faith in the coins thst are circulating in auctions now, slabbed or not. Right now my best bet is buying and getting them authenticated by David Sear but what if i buy a forgery. It is a hard hurdle to overcome.

The other issue is John Ii thessalonica issue, john iii is hot right now so many auctions are pitching coins that are John II Comnenus as John III of Nicea. The only way to differentiate is how many carats the coin is. John II 20 carats, John.III is 17. No auction house is testing them. Its all a guess. No way to visually see a difference.

 

Is it only me, I wonder, but I see many little differences between your potential fake and the (allegedly) established fake.

• The os and thetas on the reverse legends on the left seem to be much thicker on the forgery network coin.
• On the reverse, the bottom of the floating bit on Romanos' garment seems to be slightly different including the angle it hangs from his left hand.
• on the obverse, the cross on Jesus' halo (the top bit) is differently aligned in relation to his nose. That is a quite obvious difference.
• The overall level of wear is quite different, and the die rings seem slightly different especially on the reverse.

However, there are enough similarities on the dies that somehow you do feel the same dies were used one way or another. Wear can possibly be faked to make different versions of the same coin look different, and if this is the case, then it is a very elaborate fake.But how do you explain the little alignment differences on both sides?

Could it be that one coin is real and the other is the fake that was inspired/copied from the real ones's dies? But in that case, which one is which? I think it is possible that in some cases real coins were condemned as fakes just because they were made using dies that were later copied from forgers. I find this whole situation rather unsettling and quite damaging to the level of confidence in our hobby.

We need a technology similar to carbon dating that works for metals, and we need it fast!

 

John, The last fake I got, Sear 1820, came from a major European auction house. I've seen this same fake pop up at 2 other European auction houses after I was duped . I don't shop on eBay so I can't speak for their vendors. The overall appearance of this fake is excellent, it's hand struck from good metal, & the weight & size are right-on. Pictured below is another example of this fake that I spotted almost a year ago.



Pictured below is another example of this fake posted on the Forgery Network website.