Byzantine silver coins

[vercingetorix]

I wonder why did the byzantines mint so few silver coins.In many catalogues I saw only bronze or gold and no silver...  

[Alex]

I think at that time the silver mines were completelly exhausted.  They got their gold from commerce. Its a lot easier to trade in gold, wich is more valuable than silver.
Or maybe they just didnt like silver   The scarcity of silver is long before byzantines. Starting with the tetrarchy period, every silver coin is quite rare.

[LordBest]

As far as I can tell, Byzantine billon coins dont seem to be uncommon. Proper Billon, not just silver washed AEs. Seems to be loads of Alexius I billon trachys(?) around at the moment. I realise these arent exactly silver coins, but it still shows they used a bit of silver, not just gold and bronze.
            LordBest.  

[E. Forlanini]

I think that silver coins never made it in Byzantium's
economic system: the follis was the popular coins
for little transations, while the solidus was the coin
used by merchants for international trading. But
silver? Besides one must remember that the Eastern
Roman Empire has probably more gold to mint than silver
because of the large use of silver for eastern trading
during the second and third century. This explains why
the Sasanian minted almost only silver coins. I read
that sasanian dirhams were the common silver piece
used by merchants not only in the Persian empire but
even in the Byzantine empire.

[Chris Connell]

Byzantine silver is scarce to rare, but not because it was not struck.  Quantities were smaller than gold or copper because of the coins' awkward place in the economy, but they were struck throughout Byzantine history: siliquae and fractions in the early period, "hexagrams" during the Heraclian dynasty, miliarense and fractions during the middle period, and stavrata and fractions in the late empire.

One explanation for the scarcity of coins in the early and middle periods of Byzantine history is simply that the Byzantines had a less advantageous exchange rate for silver to gold.  That meant that almost as soon as silver coins were struck they were smuggled to surrounding arab/persian neighbors, exchanged for gold, which was then smuggled back and exchanged for silver.  The more turnaround, the greater profit.  This, plus smaller minting in the first place, makes Byzantine silver very rare and desirable today.

BTW, the silver content of most billon issues is practically non existent.  If you were to do a spectral analysis of most "billon" coins, you would find that they are mostly copper and tin.

--Chris Connell