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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;medoraman, post: 2207800, member: 26302&quot;]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.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>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.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>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 &quot;garbage&quot; 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.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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