222 Baker
material, have called into doubt some of these attributions.14 For instance,
the existence of a Latin mint at Thessalonica has been rejected, and the
entire so-called “Bulgarian” series has been re-christened as “Faithful Copies”.
Nevertheless, the resolution of these outstanding controversies is of much
greater importance for the monetary history of Macedonia, Thrace, Bulgaria,
Constantinople, and western Anatolia, than it is for that of Greece proper. No
billon trachea of the early 13th-century imitative varieties, with the exception
of some counterfeits,15 were produced there, and the widespread circulation of
issues of Constantinopolitan mintage was largely confined to the first decade
of the 13th century.16 The gold coinage of Latin Constantinople in the name of
Emperor John iii Vatatzes (1221–54), which has been identified with good con-
fidence only relatively recently by Ernest Oberländer-Târnoveanu, was all the
more important in Greece.17 At the lowest denominational level, counterfeit
Grierson, eds., Catalogue of the Byzantine Coins in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection and in
the Whittemore Collection, 4].
14 See for instance the expositions of Michael Metcalf, “The Peter and Paul Hoard: Bulgarian
and Latin Imitative Trachea in the Time of Ivan Asen ii,” Numismatic Chronicle ser. 7,
13 (1973), 144–72; idem, “Byzantinobulgarica: The Second Bulgarian Empire and the
Problem of ‘Byzantine Imitative’ Trachea before and after 1204,” Numismatic Circular,
81, 11 (1973), 418–21; idem, “The Value of the Amorgos and Thira Hoards as a Test Case
for the Interpretation of Sub-Byzantine Trachea in the Years around 1204,” Νομισματικά
Χρονικά 8 (1989), 49–59; idem, “Faithful Copies and a Hoard Containing Neatly-Clipped
Trachea,” in Χαρακτήρ. Αφιέρωμα στη Μαντώ Οικονομίδου [Character: A Dedication to Manto
Oikonomidou] (Athens, 1996), pp. 177–83; idem, review of doc iv, Numismatic Chronicle,
160 (2000), 396–401; idem, “Mint-Activity in Byzantine Thessaloniki,” in Tο νόμισμα στο
Μακεδονικό χώρο [Coinage in Macedonia], ed. Polyxeni Adam-Veleni (Thessalonica, 2000),
pp. 171–82. There are also contributions by Manto Oikonomidou and Ioannes Touratsoglou
on the subject, and the joint opinion of the Athens Numismatic Museum is expressed in
Mina Galani-Krikou, Ioannes Touratsoglou and Io Tsourti, Συλλογή Ηλία Κάντα: Βυζαντινά
Νομίσματα [Collection of Elias Kantas: Byzantine Coins] (Athens, 2000). With regard to
Serbian finds, see the work of Dobrila Gaj-Popović.
15 Orestes H. Zervos, “An Issue of Irregular Copper Coins of the Early Thirteenth Century
from Corinth,” Νομισματικά Χρονικά 26 (2007), 91–93.
16 Many of the Greek hoards of Byzantine-style coins are now fully published in Mina
Galani-Krikou et al., Σύνταγμα Βυζαντινών “Θησαυρών” του Νομισματικού Μουσείου [Collection
of Byzantine Hoards of the Numismatic Museum] (Athens, 2002).
17 Ernest Oberländer-Târnoveanu, “Les hyperpères de type Jean iii Vatatzès-Classification,
chronologie et évolution du titre (à la lumière du trésor d’Uzun Baïr, dép. de Tulcea),” in
Istro-Pontica: Muzeul Tulcean la a 50-a aniversare (Tulcea, 2000), pp. 499–561.