Sale: Triton VII, Lot: 1112. Estimate $1250.  Closing Date: Monday, 12 January 2004.  Sold For $1800. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

JUSTINIAN II. Second Reign, 705-711 AD. AV Tremissis (1.23 gm). Rome mint? [d N IhS ChS] REX REGNANIUO, facing bust of Christ, raising hand in benediction and holding Gospels; cross behind head / D N [ IUSTIN]IA NUS MU, facing bust of Justinian, wearing crown and loros, holding cross potent on three steps and patriarchal globus inscribed PAX. DOC II 21; MIB III 27; SB 1442. Good VF, unusually nice strike on a broad flan. Rare. ($1250)

The identification of imperial issues from the Italian mints of the late 7th-8th centuries is fraught with difficulties. In most cases lacking clear mintmarks, the coins may be assigned to specific mints solely on stylistic affinities to known types, and the distribution of site finds. Experts are essentially divided into two camps, the "lumpers" and the "splitters". The first will assign all issues to the known imperial mints at Rome and Ravenna, with anything not fitting into those categories being put down as imitative issues of the Germanic tribes. The "splitters" find outposts of Byzantine authority all over the Italian penninsula and the islands, each with an ephemeral mint. R. Prina was the prime exponent of this latter view, listing about a dozen mints in Italy. Hahn, in MIB, illustrates two series of gold coins of the second reign of Justinian II, tentatively attributed to Rome (MIB III 26-27 and 28-31). Purely on stylistic grounds, it is difficult to make a case for these two series to be from the same mint within the short time span of the second reign. Regardless of its precise origin, this piece is a choice example of the later regional issues of Byzantine Italy.