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Byzantine gold question
worldcoinguy
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I see a decent volume of Byzantine gold offered on venues such as eBay, dealers (vcoins, apmex, etc), and auction houses such as Heritage. Has anybody ever read articles that estimate the surviving population of authentic Byzantine gold? I do not see any information on the NGC website that would indicate total pieces graded. Any ideas on (a) total graded and (b) total surviving population? I assume the graded number is 1% or less of the total surviving population.
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Hi, WCG. While I don't have a good feel for specific answers to your question (being more of a Roman guy), I'll contribute what tangential knowledge I have of Byzantine gold generally. It may not apply to all time periods 498 - 1453. As for the surviving population, Byzantine gold of the 500s - 600s seem to be among the most available of all ancient gold coins, so the surviving population is probably large compared to say gold from the Roman Republic. It should be noted that, as "entry level" ancient gold, they are targeted more frequently by counterfeiters, some of which can be deceptive. Buying raw on ebay could be riskier even than buying raw ancient coins there generally.
As far as graded examples, the trend among ancient coins in general is less emphasis on certification than modern coins, but it's becoming increasingly popular as more collectors get into ancient numismatics. I would think that early Byzantine gold would be more likely to be slabbed than other ancients. Their relatively low cost makes them marketable to a wider range of collectors, who might come from collecting backgrounds where certification is more the norm.
You've probably come to these conclusions already, so hopefully an expert will be along with more detailed information.
TitusFlavius - thanks for the thoughts. I am a novice in the areas of all things Roman and Byzantine, so your perspective on availability and counterfeiting is much appreciated. I recently bought a Heraclius AV solidus and it sparked an interest to learn more about Byzantine coinage in general. I have poured through many short articles on Byzantine coinage and I am curious if it is possible to quantify the surviving population of coinage across the 1,000 year time frame. I like numbers and I think it is natural to ponder the size of the Byzantine gold market.........in other words, of the X estimated to have been minted over that time, X are estimated to survive. Were there 1,000,000 pieces minted over that time? 10,000,000? 50,000,000? Perhaps that is a question to which we have no idea. Perhaps it is more realistic to scale the question back to ask how many Heraclius gold pieces were minted from 610 to 641? How many Phocas were minted between 602 and 610? Was it common to melt the coinage of the previous emperor and restrike?
I really did not intend to steer this towards a "to slab or not to slab" conversation, but that was just one way of better understanding how many have passed through the hands of the grading company. For perspective, consider that:
This is what triggered my mind to wonder. Part of the Aurora Family Collection sold by Goldberg a couple of years ago.
Heraclius (AD 610-640)
AV Solidus
Byzantine gold coins circulated for centuries all over Europe and the Mediterranean area.
They were the famous "bezants" of England.
There are a lot of them buried out there.
John II Gold Hyperpyron Christ
Size: 27 x 25 mm
Weight: 4.18 gm
Catalog: Sear 1940
Struck: AD 1122-1137, Constantinople
The Mysterious Egyptian Magic Coin
Coins in Movies
Coins on Television
That's a gorgeous example! The dynastic obverse design is cool. Certainly more creative than the later designs of the Western Empire. My library is pretty light on Byzantine sources, so I wouldn't know where to start looking for the numbers you seek. In the absence of pop reports, the most easily quantifiable population information would be to compare frequency of auction appearances between issues. It won't give exact survival rates, but could shed light on relative availability.
As to the practice of remelting older coinage, it may have been a common practice, not so much for political reasons, but to keep the Imperial Treasury from being cheated by light weight, and counterfeit coins. David Sear, in his "Roman Coins and their Values, Volume V" describes a reform by Emperor Valentinian I in 366 - 367 AD whereby the Imperial Treasury would not accept payment in coin, only in officially certified bars of pure gold or silver. Holders of coins would need to have them melted down, and made into bars to make payments. These pure bars could then be recoined at newly established comitatensian mints under strict imperial control, instead of by the frequently corrupt moneyers. These new coins were identified as obryzum (refined gold), or pusulatum (refined silver), in their mint marks (OB for gold, PS for silver).
As you can see, the mint mark style established with this reform continued well into Byzantine times. I'm not sure how long the practice of remelting coins into bullion for payment to the treasury continued, but it would make sense to compensate for clipping of the precious metal coinage.
For Morgan dollars and St. Gaudens they have been grading these
for the last 30+ years. The graded versus minted number is relatively
small. 95%+ are not worth grading. For Byzantine, ancient and foreign in
general the numbers are even smaller. Grading non U.S. coins is a
recent (last 5 years) occurrence.