In the 60s of the last century, the famous
numismatist Michael Handy gained access to a whole series of
hoards (more than 19) of
Byzantine bilon tracheas of the 12th century, found at different times in the Balkans, mainly in
Bulgaria. Having studied thousands of scyphtes,
Hendy noted a number of small, but stable differences in the design of the main
types of bilon trachea, starting with the metropolitain asprons of the second
type, dating back to the years of the reign of
John II Komnenus (
Sear 1944) and up to the last, minted before the catastrophe of 1204, low-grade asprons of
Alexius III.
The special marks discovered by
Hendy on the asprons of the Komnenos dynasty and also Isaac II Angelos were considered a little earlier, but now I want to draw your attention to similar features of the asprons of Alexei III Angelos (1195-1203), the last of the
Byzantine emperors, who massively minted a bilon
scyphate coin on the eve of the catastrophe 1204.
A clearly noticeable
sharp drop in the
weight and
quality of execution of a small
scyphate coin, which began under Isaac II, continued under
Alexius III Angelus. It was at this time that the neatly clipping of a higher
quality early coin began in order to bring it into line with the value of a smaller and lower
quality new one.
Each of the groups (A, B, C and D) of the bilon (and practically, already copper) tracheas of
Alexius III has 2-3 varieties, indicated by a small letter in brackets. To Michael Handy's classification, I have added a couple of new subspecies that occur repeatedly and therefore deserve attention. A visual diagram was made by me a couple of years ago.