Late issue Alexandria Troas for Gallienus unofficial?

[Ed Flinn]

While researching my apparently unpublished AE21 of Alexandria Troas for Valerian II, as seen here, in the FORVM galleries, I purchased the reprint of Alfred R. Bellinger's 1960 Troy the Coins.  In it, he proposes that the late-issue AE24 coins of Alexandria Troas, for Gallienus, like
and

are, in fact, private and unauthorized issues, produced after the mint was closed, providing Alexandria Troas with familiar designs on coins superior to the degraded imperial antoniniani then current.

I wonder if the theory's been rebutted, to what effect, and where I might read the rebuttal.

[curtislclay]

       The great French scholar Louis Robert had so much to criticize about Bellinger's book that what he started as a review of the book ran into a full monograph of his own, Monnaies antiques en Troade, 1966!
        However I don't find anything there about the final issues of Gallienus at Alexandria.
        I am not convinced by Bellinger's conjecture.  To me the coins look like a poor official issue, their larger size suggesting a new denominational system.  There is nothing about them that makes me at all inclined to follow B's conjecture.

[Ed Flinn]

Thanks.  It occurred to me that he was piling one speculation on another in this case, with the size and crude appearance of the coins substituting for actual evidence.

If provincial coinage ended because the cities chose to stop minting, rather than by imperial mandate, Bellinger's theory falls apart, and even if it can be demonstrated the the provincial mints closed on orders from Rome, that still doesn't quite rise to the level of evidence that these were produced afterwards.