The silver asper
SBCV 2601 of
Manuel I Comnenus of
Trebizond is a very common
type, as most
Byzantine collectors will know, but it’s immediate predecessor, the silver
trachy SBCV 2600, is (or at least was) one of the hardest
Byzantine coins of all to find, in the
west at any rate (see examples below).
Until recently no examples of this
type had appeared on the market in modern times that I’m aware of, but now no less than four copies have been offered since October last, supposedly “from the inventory of a
German dealer”.
The interesting thing about these coins is that all four examples seem to be from different dies, so perhaps this
type was originally not all that
rare, as the 10 examples listed in
Retowski suggest.
Hence it would be interesting to know whether examples of the
type have turned up in places like the Crimea, which seems to have been the source of Retowsi’s examples.
Ross G.