These arrived today. Long story, but in a nutshell I was gunning for any of many large lots of mixed silver Greeks an auction 5 weeks ago. Was crushed by the bidding which was many times higher than estimates. Out of frustration, anger, and total lack of discipline I clicked bid when this relatively unloved lot was almost off the block. And won. Until today I had only 2 Byzantine coins-- both Christ folli. Now I have oodles. Time to crack out the Byz books! Oh wait, I have to buy some first OK, the virtual Byz books. The coins came in one big bag. There are 30 separate old paper envelopes with attributions, dealer's notes, etc. Judging from the envelopes and writing, it looks like these were all or mostly from one dealer or collector and the envelopes look rather old. Some have prices but I don't know whether those prices were in Euro, Deutsch Mark, or other, much less the year they were written. Step one will be matching the envelope to the coin. 32 coins, don't know which are missing envelopes. The tremissis is Constantine IV, not the most exciting coin for my first ancient gold. I'm sure I'll grow to love them all. Many are in better condition than I expected. Too tired to take better pictures tonight, these are phone shots. I picked up a few other individual coins at that auction and I'll photograph and post them this weekend.
man that's great, it's the "byzantine empire's greatest hits" in one lot. several cool ones, what's that middle second row from top? some type of leo vi? i see several others of his that look nice. neat little monograms also. will eagerly await the individual shots!
Just glancing thru these, it looks like there are some very interesting coins and some in fair shape for Byzantine coinage. Congrats and have fun.
Agree with everyone else. They look like a great bunch of coins and in pretty decent shape to boot! My mixed lot included one coin that had the bejaysus tooled out of it, and an as that suffered a brutal clipping. Yours look like pageant winners in comparison. Z.
Z-- sorry to hear that your group wasn't as good as you'd hoped. Greek bronzes, did you say? Sean-- no plans to sell any at this point, but I'll keep that in mind.
1st - 2nd century Roman bronzes. Actually, they came in just about in the range of my expectations, which weren't high since this lot really was the most unloved of the roman lots. I had some pleasant surprises and some holes filled (empresses, Nerva, coins with countermarks). Anyway, enjoy your Byzantines. Just looking at them again and they really do look like a nice varied lot.
Great-looking lot! I agree that Sear is your best bet for attribution, especially the section in the introduction where he deciphers all the monograms. I've got a mixed lot to post also, six Romans, three bronze, three silver - nothing terribly special, but the seller's pics were pretty bad so I'm waiting to take my own before I post.
