I've shown the good half of what followed me home from vacation leaving only things I thought interesting and the mistakes. All the remaining are Byzantine. I bought two folles of Constantine X not realizing I had the type and my old one was better. They get no number and will end up being given to someone at church as likely as not. I have not decided whether or not to assign a number in my collection to an A2 anonymous follis with an ancient hole and very unusual letter A form on the reverse. Is it stupid to buy a coin because you like the way they made the A's look like an I over an M? That is who I am. Three coins are getting numbers. The almost slick faced Justinian Antioch 20 nummi has a nice reverse (year 25) and is a good example of the use of follis obverse dies for striking half folles so there is no legend around the big face. The coin caused me to get out my copy of Harlan Berk's Eastern Roman Successors of the Sestertius which is mostly a priced catalog with meaningless numbers but many interesting little tidbits scattered here and there and a lot of really good line drawings of really ugly coins. The last two have been enough fun to justify their purchase. Both are messy overstrikes by Heraclius over Justin II and Maurice respectively. I like overstrikes where you can read a lot of the undertype detail. These are not my best but still worth adding to the pile so I could negotiate a lot price rather than paying more for the few coins I really wanted. Sometimes buying coins is more to justify driving five miles out of the way to find the store suggested by a smart phone query. I get more fun out of coins that don't demand being taken seriously.
Boy, if the error collectors ever move into ancient numismatics Doug and I are going to make a gold mine, huh? Nowadays I find myself avoiding overstrikes as much as possible. With certain issues, an error free strike is much rarer than error ones. I still find overstrikes interesting, but also want clean examples too. Btw, I would have bought the anonymous bronze for the unusual A letters too. Its pretty cool. I have not seen that, and own dozens anonymous bronzes, although I will say the series is simply littered with varieties. Anyone here could literally spend a decade and write an authoritative book on just one of the thirteen anonymous bronze's varieties. A2 and I are the two that come to mind with the greatest varieties I have seen. Rarities like F, H, and J far fewer of course.
Super cool junk, Mentor ... oh, and I love reading your write-ups (yah, it's always like we're right there at the coin-show with you as you're sifting-through the poor unsuspecting dealer's junk pile) I happen to have a couple of Heraclius overstrikes as well (I'm fairly sure that you've seen them several times before, but hey, that's never stopped me from posting them again) HERACLIUS Overstruck on Justin I follis 610-641 AD ca. 616/7-621/2 Sicilian mint Diameter: 29 mm Weight: 12.77 grams Obverse: Crowned bust of Heraclius facing; to right, monogram; all within circular incuse Reverse: SCLs within circular incuse HERACLIUS Overstruck on Anastasius follis circa 622 AD or earlier Diameter: 33.5mm Weight: 13.6g Obverse: Facing bust of Heraclius, monogram-cross beside, all within 9mm countermarked circle, bust of Anastasius clearly identifiable underneath Reverse Large M from original undertype, mintmark CON overstamped with SCLS mintmark
Yours is a different animal though Steve. I love your coins. Yours are two coins in one. The host coin, and then a new mark made years later to retariff and revalidate them for use once again. So yours is not a minting error, (thogh those can be both cool and informative), but rather something better, documentation of the revolt of the Heraclii and their beginnings of rule. I just got a group of Syracuse Byzantine coins, but not one of these of course.
Thanks for the coinpliments, medoraman ... Yah, I guess the two aren't exactly the same thing, eh? (oh well, they're kinda brothers from a different mother)
Nah, don't be embarrassed man. I love you posted yours. Its a great lesson for new collectors of what different types of coins are. Most newer collectors would see these pieces and either not know what they are, or think they are all the same. Doug's pieces are examples of double striking, or overstriking. However, they weren't really trying to retariff a coin, rather simply reuse a flan or an error in production. Yours, though, was intentionally keeping the host coin intact, and just reauthorizing them for use under the new leadership of Heraclius. So Doug's is an overstrike, yours is a countermark. They look similar sometimes, but are different animals.
Thanks medoraman (you rock) ... honestly, I look for any excuse to post my "stuff" here is one of my favourite overstrikes ... BOEOTIA, Federal Coinage (Overstrike), Æ18 Circa 220s BC Diameter: 17.5 mm Weight: 5.11 grams Obverse: Head of Demeter or Kore (Persephone) three-quarter face right, wearing corn-wreath Reverse: Poseidon, naked, standing left, resting right foot on rock and leaning on trident; to right, ΒΟΙΩΤ[ΩΝ] downward Reference: BCD Boiotia 108 (this coin); HGC 4, 1182. VF, dark brown patina. Overstruck on Æ of Antigonos Gonatas of the type SNG Cop. 1214-1221 Other: 12h … the overstrikes are reversed on this coin, which is quite rare Ex BCD Collection (Triton IX, 10 January 2006), lot 108. Oh, here is the host coin ... ummm, now can you figure it out? Oooops, once again I seem to have side-swiped somebody else's thread (sorry Doug) ... sadly, I only have one-speed (Squirrel)
I agree with the difference here and like the way that you tried to get Steve into the subject by calling them animal coins. I am not onboard with the intent of some overstrikes. In some cases the second strike was so weak that it is hard to believe they wanted to erase the undertype. Some mints would hammer an old coin flat before overstriking but these did not. In some cases the edges of the flan suggest that the weight was reduced to a new standard but my Heraclius over JUSTIN IS 13.77g which is way too high for his normal coins. Th one over Maurice is 10.58g. I do not have one to show but there are really obvious pie shaped flans that were cut quarters of earlier coins restruck to make four coins from one. My Phocas below seems to be what you get from clipping down a larger coin. I assume the trimmings were melted down and recast into new flans. The question that remains unanswered to my satisfaction is how the mint got away with such poor workmanship. I'd think someone who did not care at all could do this well by accident.
I agree with the mystery of the 7th century and why they allowed mint standards to get abysmally low. I believe the nadir was Constans II. You never know if most of these coins are crappy official issues, imitative issues, or Arab Byzantine. Just a whole big pile of garbage coins for the most part relating to the bronzes. In my mind I always blamed the strenuous wars they were subjected to during this time. First the Sassanids, who nearly destroyed them, then after the Sassanids self-destructed the Arab invasions came. I suppose how small change looked was not terribly important when fighting for survival. Btw, I do agree with you Doug on some overstrikes. I do have pie shaped coins, (quite a few in fact), of examples where the Byzantines quartered earlier coins and overstruck on these quarter pieces. I think I bought a large lot of "garbage" a decade ago and there were many examples of this, mainly Constans II coins, in there. So yes, there are examples of them simply overstriking carelessly a previous coin, or shaving down a previous coin and overstriking, and examples of quartering and overstriking. However, in each case, even though the mint may have had shoddy standards, the INTENT was to obliterate the previous design and make a new one. This is an overstrike. A countermark is where they intended to keep the previous design, but simply make ANOTHER coin in it as well, many times either reauthorizing the old coin to circulate, or retariffing the denomination.
Btw, if we are talking about overstrikes, we should acknowledge the fact that they are simply superb for our hobby. There are TONS of information we have learned and continue to learn, from them. Anonymous bronzes were first ordered correctly by Margaret Thompson simply by overstrikes. If this coin is over that one, then by definition the overstrike has to be AFTER the original strike. There are simply hundreds of examples like this in ancient numismatics, and kings and coins continue to this day to be attributed correctly by overstrike data. So, whether you love them or hate them, please understand how tremendously valuable overstrikes have been to us, and continue to be.
I've started leaning this way as well, although there are some series that I would just kill to obtain a nice overstruck example. Alexandrian tets for example.
