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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;The Trachy Enjoyer, post: 7627351, member: 118358&quot;][ATTACH=full]1312224[/ATTACH]</p><p><b>Maurice Tiberius 23 Siliqua Lightweight Solidus, Constantinople Mint. 22mm, 4.25 grams</b></p><p>Reference Sear 481...except mine is scyphate?<img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie9" alt=":eek:" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1312223[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]1312220[/ATTACH]</p><p>This coin is quite interesting. It is a normal Maurice Tiberius solidus with one exception: it is concave. Normal solidii are as flat as can be yet this coin is quite clearly cup shaped. At 4.25 grams and 22 mm, it is consistent with other lighterweight solidii of 23 siliquae.</p><p><br /></p><p>It is not clear how or why this coin is scyphate. Under 6th century mint practices, such an error would be impossible. Curved Byzantine coins don&#039;t arrive until half a millennia later. That would point this roundness to being post mint damage, acquired after entering the public market. To make a normal solidus curved in the 6th century, while perhaps not invalidating the currency, would certainly raise suspicion in an economy only using flat gold coins.</p><p><br /></p><p>This leads me to suspect two possibilities in how this coin became curved. The first, perhaps less likely of the two, is that the coin was found hundreds of years later and &quot;crimped&quot; to better fit in a byzantine economy filled with curved hyperpyron. Such a transformation would be possible due to the gold coins having roughly the same weight over a millennium. With a solidus made concaved, it could better fit in with other hyperpyron. However, one wonders that if the finding and reusing of a solidus in the 11th century or onwards occurred, then wouldn&#039;t it be easier to just use the (flat) solidus&#039; gold as bullion or melt down and restrike the found solidus into the currency of the day? The second possibility is that this coin was made scyphate to fit some sort of jewelry design. The explanation here would be that a curved solidus might have been more attractive to the owner for some reason than a flat one.</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1312221[/ATTACH]</p><p>The coin does have one or two spots on the edges with a small dip. This might be evidence of mounting and thus support the jewelry theory or could be remnants from the process which turned this coin from flat to curved. The solidus has passed through the hands of at least one auction house and a few dealers so it would seem to have consensus in regards to authenticity. I reached out to Warren Esty a while back and he was very helpful in being able to get me into contact with a kind Byzantine professor named Mike who said that he was aware of one other curved solidus, an issue of Justin II from HJB. It would seem to me that for whatever reason these two solidii are curved, perhaps they were &quot;converted&quot; by the same source. Its an odd coin for sure and poses more questions than I can find answers too. I haven&#039;t been able to find anything else like it online. Has anyone seen anything like this?</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1312222[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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