Those are some really interesting comments. How did this coin—
how do these coins, i.e. those that do not have very distinctive features or (clear) legends—get precisely attributed to a very particular ruler like
John V? Why not the other John's of the family Palaeologus? (Or an Alexius, a Manuel, or simply "Anyonymous Class K...")
I just take the word of the references. I don't have the knowledge to really challenge them seriously. But it's interesting when the references contradict one another, or just admit a level of uncertainty (I like that
Wildwinds has a couple of those pages, sucha as the really early
Electrum coinage that could be almost featureless). Because there is certainly uncertainty in these!
People (some people) say there is a
legend, and I have no reason to doubt their authority, but I've never been able to make out where it is. There are the x's t's or crosses left of Demetrius... Interesting about
Manuel II (or Manny 1?) -- someone else must think so, because when I first tried to identify it, somehow I came up with that name. All I remember of that is that I
had it written on a tan little envelope followed by "?".
Not like the
Roman Constantinian era (which
had its own mysteries, to be sure) and there was basically a template for sticking
bust,
type of headwear,
exergue mintmark and
officina... Almost like a Mr. Potatoehead! They just changed the parts around for the appropriate time, ruler, status, location,
denomination, etc. For me, that's the distinctiveness of that time and place in
history: unlike the Greek and
Byzantine coinage, with its wide and wild variations, for a few hundred years the
Romans strove to bureaucratize the entire empire! The distinctiveness of the
Greeks is their emphasis on aesthetic, bodily beauty--hence the beautiful lions and divine characters. The constrast fascinates me....especially the transitions (the decline of Imperial
Rome and its progressively declining coinage; the
Republican and
Provincials which show some of the old Greek flair; then the chaos of the middle ages, though I admit
to ignorance on the subject, just based on what my own eyes see and the little I've read so far).