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Message:: [QUOTE="robinjojo, post: 7931835, member: 110226"]Nice write-up and group! Trachy coinage for me is uncharted waters, something along the lines of ancient maps with unknown areas noted as "There be monsters". The late Byzantine trachys are a world unto themselves, and certainly one worth exploring.  I only have a few that happened to be part of a group lot of Byzantine bronzes.  I guess they were thrown in for lack of group lot trachys for that auction. Here's one of them.  I think this is Sear 1918, Alexis I Comnenus, with some edge chips.  I think the small chips just happened naturally.  Of course someone in Byzantine times might have left them as a tip at a restaurant, for really lousy service. [ATTACH=full]1371589[/ATTACH] Given their very nature as "cup coins" their unusual shapes, and the brittle nature of the billon flans, often with significant splits, lend themselves to all sorts of odd strikes and often weak, worn, off center or double struck convex sides, and quite often nice concave sides.  That does make the challenge of finding really nice examples all the greater.[/QUOTE]