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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;dougsmit, post: 2534012, member: 19463&quot;]Among the great rarities of the 11th century Byzantine coppers are coins that were struck on metal that had not been used for coins previously.&nbsp; That provides us with many overstruck coins ranging from messy to really messy.&nbsp; I find interest in trying to figure out just how these coins came to be.&nbsp; Below are three Byzantine folles.&nbsp; On the left is Romanus IV&#039;s almost anonymous issue kept from that title by the large R on the reverse which stands for (guess?) Romanus.&nbsp; Research project: find a reference on these that doesn&#039;t assume you know the meanings of the other letters.&nbsp; On the right is a follis of Michael VII showing Christ facing on the obverse and the emperor on the reverse.&nbsp; I rotated the reverse to orient it like the detail on the middle coin which is what we got striking the right coin over the left coin.&nbsp; I should have rotated the obverse of the left coin to be oriented with the center coin but I could not find details that convinced me which way was up.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]541916[/ATTACH] </p><p>The interesting thing IMHO here is the weights and diameters of the coins.&nbsp; One reason for overstriking was to cut down on the metal used so it is no great surprise to me that the left coin &quot;undertype&quot; is heavier than the others.&nbsp; The surprise is that it is only a bit more than half the weight but 6mm greater in diameter.&nbsp; My guess here is that the host coin was trimmed down and hammered flat a bit more than usual making a flan so thin that it only retained a few of the details.&nbsp; We see part of the cross and a weak C (upper left quadrant).&nbsp; The C is larger than the one on the left coin but I see this as evidence that the coin was hammered (perhaps between leather???) to spread the flan for reuse.&nbsp; The more I look at coins like this, the more details I see that can be linked to the previous coin.&nbsp; This is the game for the truly bored I mentioned in the title.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>If you see something here you thing I saw incorrectly, please tell me.&nbsp; Both the right and the left coins show signs of having been, themselves, overstruck.&nbsp; On the left, is that a small Christ face peering over the top of the large Christ?&nbsp; Could it be SB1853?&nbsp; Identifying the history of these coins can be fun for those who like their coins &#039;Byzantine&#039;.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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