Sale: CNG 67, Lot: 1892. Estimate $1000.  Closing Date: Wednesday, 22 September 2004.  Sold For $1200. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

ROMANUS II. 959-963 AD. AV Solidus (4.37 gm). Constantinople mint. Struck 959 AD. Continuing the last type of Constantine VII. Nimbate (three pellets in arms of cross) facing bust of Christ, raising hand in benediction and holding Gospels / Crowned facing busts of Constantine, wearing loros, and Romanus, wearing chlamys, holding patriarchal cross between them; legend has been re-cut and is illegible. F. Füeg, "Vom Umgang mit Zufall und Wahrscheinlichkeit in der Numismatischen Forschung," SNR 76 (1997), pl. IV, B4; DOC III - (but cf. DOC 15 of Constantine VII); SB -. Good VF. Extremely rare and historically important. ($1000)

Füeg places this issue in the early days of the sole reign of Romanus II, who succeeded his father after a tumultuous reign of forty-six years. The dies are re-used solidus dies of Constantine, but with the reverse legend obliterated by over-cutting. Romanus is reputed to have had scant interest in governing, leaving the administration of the empire to his wife, Theophano, and a group of advisors led by Joseph Bringas. There seems to have been little incentive to produce a coinage in the name of this ineffectual ruler, his only other solidi being two rare types, both of which were thought to survive in unique specimens at the time the DO catalogue was compiled. Grierson makes an observation in DOC under Romanus II that his solidi seem to have been struck with dies set differently from normal, with the imperial portraits taking the obverse position. The present coin seem to take the same orientation. They are in any case the last solidi struck before the introduction of the tetarteron by Nicephorus II.