DOC has just launched a new online
catalog and of course Simon
Bendall was mentioned.
Bendall, Simon (1937–2019)
Scholar, dealer. and collector, the leading expert on late
Byzantine coins. Worked at
Spink’s between 1965 and 1967, then at Baldwin’s for twenty years, until 1987, when he moved to California a joined the staff of
Bruce McNall at
Numismatics Fine Arts (
NFA) in Los Angeles. On
his return to
London two years later, he was briefly an independent coin dealer and mostly a consultant for museums,
auction houses, and collectors. He rejoined
his first employer,
Spink’s, between 2006 until
his retirement in 2010. He authored more than 200 articles, of which a selection of reprints is being prepared by I.
Vecchi and Eleni
Lianta. He published the pioneering The
Billon Trachea of
Michael VIII, 1258–1282 (1974) and The Later Palaeologan Coinage, 1282–1453 (1979), with drawings by
Peter Donald; the
catalogue of
his collection, A Private
Collection of Palaeologan Coins (1988); Byzantine
Weights: An Introduction (1996), the only introduction currently available; and an updated introduction to the Coinage of the
Empire of Trebizond (2015). He wrote the late Byzantine section in David
Sear’s
Byzantine Coins and Their Values (2nd ed., 1987).
His collection was stolen in 1989 when he was working with
NFA. He recovered a
part, which he sold to the Ashmolean Museum,
Oxford, in 1999, and which makes up the core of E.
Lianta’s Late
Byzantine Coins 1204–1453 in the Ashmolean Museum University of
Oxford (2009).
His recent acquisitions were also stolen from
his London residence in 2018.
