SOUTH KOREA CONSIDERS NCLT ISSUES
We Call Them Byzantines
The competition to market non-circulating legal tender commemorative coins internationally may soon become even more intense than it already is.
The major players for such products are Australia, Austria, Canada, China, the United Kingdom, and the United States. South Korea is now contemplating trying to join this “Big Six.”
According to sales statistics made available by the Korea Minting and Security Printing Corporation or KOMSCO, during 2022 U.S. commemorative sales were the equivalent of 4.85 trillion won (about $362,213,374 U.S.), those of China were 4.26 trillion won, Canada were 2.98 trillion won, Austria was 2.95 trillion won, 2.63 trillion won for the UK.
South Korea is among a number of countries whose commemorative coins have been issued sporadically in the past. South Korea has not issued NCLTs on any regular basis but now is considering changing that.
Among the things being considered is product recognition. Each of the six major NCLT producers each uses a nationally recognized symbol on their products. KOMSCO said of this, “In Korea’s case, we may consider hallyu (a word identified with popular South Korean culture) and K-pop in our design for a coin.”
South Korea has issued coins in the past to mark special occasions. Among these are the 1988 Seoul Summer Olympics and the 2018 Pyeong Chang Winter Olympics. KOMSCO sold more than 10,000 medals marking the 10th anniversary of K-pop boy band BTS’ in 2023. This may have whet the appetite for more such products since sales of the BTS medals set a record for KOMSCO of about 6 billion won or about $ 34,354,000 U.S.
Another reason for KOMSCO to consider issuing more commemorative products is that South Korea is rapidly evolving into a cashless society.
During the last week of January KOMSCO hosted a seminar to discuss how issuing commemorative coins can contribute to its growth. The seminar also discussed how gold, silver, and other precious metal content coins can have artistic value and for that reason serve South Korea’s goal of moving forward as an international cultural powerhouse. On January 28 the organization announced “plans to issue commemorative coins as part of efforts to explore new growth engines.”
KOMSCO is controlled by the Ministry of Economy and Finance. According to the KOMSCO website, “KOMSCO, a newly modernized mint, has the capacity to produce about 1.7 billion circulation coins per year and has experience with the export of circulation coins and master punches. Based on our confidence we have achieved continuous contracts with many countries, one of which has been our faithful customer for more than 10 years.”
The website explains, “Commemorative coins are issued for financing purposes. The National Assembly enacts special support acts and a certain business entity produces a plan and acquires approval from the government to issue the commemorative coins through a review by the Bank of Korea’s Monetary Policy Board. The sales price is set higher than face value and sold as a premium share as it has financing purposes. The issuance of premium commemorative coins is the sole responsibility of KOMSCO, but the sales will be in the hands of the certain business entity.”
The website continues, “When a case is brought to issue a commemorative coin, a government approval acquisition process is carried out and the Bank of Korea’s Monetary Policy Board makes the decision regarding the design, size, and quantity of the coins and then KOMSCO takes the responsibility of the issuance and the sales (except for premium commemorative coins).”
KOMSCO was established in Busan in 1951 during the Korean War. The organization expanded from 10 buildings and a paper mill that year to a new facility in 1983.
According to KOMSCO, “By establishing [a] modernized monetary system we could successfully manufacture new bank notes and coins and obtain recognition of our technology. We also started to supply orders together with commemorative coins, tickets, [and] ID cards… We carried out major projects including building [a] new printing plant, movement of [the] research institute, and establishing [a] currency museum.”
“In the 1990s, we focused on diversification and development of products as well as the expansion of export markets into the global market.”
There was a major coinage reform in 491 A.D. and we, numismatists and historians in general, kind of take the reign of Emperor Anastasius as the start of the Byzantine era. He thought of himself as the Roman Emperor and so did all his successors in that line of rulers.
There are descendants of the last Byzantine Emperor. They represent themselves as the heirs of the Roman Empire, never mind they have no territory. As far as they’re concerned Istanbul belongs to them, or I suppose, the entire Roman Empire at its greatest extent. If they could somehow get it back, they would have “deserved” it, by ancient right.
So Zeno, the last “Roman” Roman Emperor, died.
He was the one who had responded to the deposition by Odoacer of the last Western Roman Emperor, Romulus, by appointing that same Odoacer as Magister Militum in Italy. There was nothing else to do.
Anyway, Zeno had a reign of problems. Roman government at that time was a mostly functional bureaucracy with criminals of various kinds killing each other at the top.
They would persecute and kill their enemies and jockey for power. Meanwhile, the bureaucracy would keep things going as best it could.
There was a rebellion hatched by his Imperial motherin-law, Verina, which drove him out of Constantinople in 475 A.D. (the year before the deposition of
Romulus in the West).
While Zeno was gone the rebels fell on each other. One of them, Basiliscus, got properly positioned long enough to quash the others. Zeno played politics and war and outflanked them all. Took about a year. In another year Zeno had cornered and eliminated all his visible remaining potential opponents.
The Western Empire fell while Zeno was dealing with that rebellion, so he was not able to do anything about the West. By the time he could have done something, it had already happened.
There was more trouble all through Zeno’s reign until his death in 491 AD. His wife, Ariadne, selected Anastasius to succeed him. She later married him, to improve his claim to the opinions of the “important” people of the Empire.
Anastasius was a civil servant. He worked in finance and was good at it. He came to the throne in his 60s. In his twenty-seven-year reign, he reformed the tax system, abolishing payment in kind and requiring they be paid in cash. Embezzlement became harder. A surplus was generated, the first in a long time. There was gold in the vaults. Successors would do things with that gold.
When he died in 518 A.D. there were no children. The captain of his guards, Justin, became emperor. There are different stories regarding how that succession came about. Justin was made emperor at the age of 68, even older than Anastatius had been. He ruled for about nine years.
In 526 A.D. there was a big earthquake that destroyed
Antioch. Justin sent funds for rebuilding. The rebuilt city was renamed Theopolis (God City) for a while. Justin died the following year.
About the coins.
The first few years of the Anastasius coinage were the last years of the old system. There were gold solidi and tremissi, of average availability today, and semissi, which are pretty rare. There were silver miliarenses, siliquae, and half siliquae, rare. And there were tiny bronze nummi, also rare.
Gold Anastasius coins are not impossible to find, but they are not as common as those of some of the later emperors. His silver and pre-reform bronze are rare.
In 498 A.D. a reform of the minor coins was put in action. Silver disappeared. They had plenty of silver in Persia, but pretty much none in Byzantium. Bronze was issued in four denominations: 40 nummi (we call them follis, and they were relatively large coins), 20 nummi, 10 nummi, 5 nummi. The denominations were indicated by letters in the standard Greek number system: M was 40, K was 20, I was 10, and E was 5.
The bronze coins were popular and circulated widely. They have been found deep into Central Asia. They tend to come in worn condition.
Mints for Anastasius were Constantinople, Thessalonika, Nicomedia in Anatolia, and Antioch.
The coinage of Emperor Justin I continued the module of the Anastasian reforms. The bronze coin types were essentially the same. The gold coins were almost the same, except that a few years into the reign the reverse type of the gold, which had been a Pagan Victory, became a Christian angel. Both were winged beings. Victory had a high-waisted gown. The angel had a tunic. Little details, but the government was telling the world that it was more Christian than ever.
In addition to the Anastasian mints, Justin’s coins were made in Cyzicus, Alexandria, and Cherson on the Black Sea.
Justin elevated his nephew, Justinian, to be co-emperor for a few months in 527 A.D., just before he died. The two of them show up on some of the coinage of those months, though some of the joint-reign coins have a single portrait, with the two names in the obverse legend. Quite a few of those right-facing portrait early Byzantine coins are so worn that there’s no obverse legend at all.
I’d say that the Justin and Justinian coins, at least the bronzes, are scarce rather than rare. If that is so, they must have made a lot of them in those few months.
As if they were trying to tell the people in the streets what the plan was.
Justinian, when he became sole emperor, ruled for thirtynine eventful years. He started with plenty of money. Those funds he used to attempt to take back the former Roman territories in Spain, North Africa, and Mesopotamia. In these massive military ventures, he was partially successful. He retook Rome and most of Italy, southern Iberia, and most of coastal North Africa, bringing the Byzantine Empire to its greatest territorial extent.
Justinian’s attempts against the Sasanids of Persia were generally inconclusive, ending with a peace treaty that included annual payments of a token amount of gold. Wikipedia mentions 400 or 500 pounds or 30,000 solidi. In international relations that wasn’t much. Wikipedia
also mentions an estimate of 300,000 pounds of gold for Justinian’s reconquest of Italy, which is probably a tenfold inflation of the actual cost, but still, 30,000 is a lot different from the 500 he was supposed to pay the Sasanids to keep them quiet.
The coinage of Justinian I was extensive and varied. Large quantities of some types have survived.
The mints were Constantinople, Thessalonika, Cherson, Nicomedia, Cyzicus, Antioch/Theopolis, Alexandria, Carthage, Constantine in Numidia (now Algeria), Rome, Ravenna, several other mints in Italy and Sicily, and probably Spain.
The early Byzantine gold coins had portraits either facing or turned to the right, typically with a Victory becoming an angel on the reverse. Justinian’s gold continued those two portrait types with angel reverses.
There were a few silver coins made, apparently all at the Constantinople mint. All are rare.
There were stylistic changes in the bronze. Facing portraits on the bronzes started with the joint reign period, where facing busts or full enthroned figures of the two Emperors were used. In Justinian’s sole coinage facing a long bust in complex regalia became an ordinary feature of the bronze as they already were on the gold, used at most of the mints. A follis of Theopolis shows the emperor’s full figure enthroned, facing, a motif that became common in subsequent reigns.
New denominations were added by various mints. In Thessalonika they made 3, 2, and 1 nummi coins. In Alexandria, they made odd denominations: 33, 12, 6, and 3 nummi. The odd denominations tend to be rare.
There was a time when slightly heavier folles were issued with large flans as wide as 40mm. Handsome coins, not too hard to find.
Some of the bronze coins have regnal years on them.
This feature would become a fixture of the coinage through several subsequent reigns.
There also was the beginning of a tendency toward sloppiness in manufacture, particularly of the bronze. One starts to find weak spots, planchet flaws, and such like problems, especially in the smaller denominations.
They also tended to circulate for a long time, especially the smaller ones. It is not uncommon to find small bronzes so worn that there is no legible obverse legend, and we can’t tell if it is Anastasius, Justin I, or Justinian.
Justinian I died in 565 A.D., and was succeeded peacefully by his nephew, Justin II, who had previously been announced to be the heir.
The expanded Empire of Justinian was very expensive to try to maintain. The treasury was rather depleted. At least there was peace on the eastern border.
Justin shut off that tribute that his uncle had been paying to the Sasanids to keep them quiet. No money anyway. So, they went to war again. Tied down in the East, Justin had no resources to deal with renewed hostile activity in the West.
What always happened was the Romans, as they lost power over their local commanders, accepted a formal if toothless suzerainty that meant, most days, that the local boss would do as he pleased and say he was doing it at the
will of the emperor. If anyone asked the emperor, he’d mutter, “Yeah, what he said.”
Here’s a story. Justin stopped buying off the Avars in Pannonia, now Hungary. The Avars started preying on the Lombards, who left for sunny Italy, recently reconquered by the Byzantines. Well, Justin was involved with the Persians in the East, and couldn’t do anything about the Lombards, and thus lost northern Italy to the Byzantines. Everything connected to everything else.
Turns out, this is where Turks start to come into the picture. Silk from China started to be a serious trade item, causing the Romans to spend gold. There were Turkic kingdoms in various places in Central Asia, through which the caravans traveled. It came to be thought by people on both sides that Byzantines and Turks had a shared opponent, and therefore reasons to discuss things together. That opponent was Sasanid Persia.
The Turks, of course, will show up more and more over time.
Justin and the Sogdian Kingdom discussed matters and arranged a trade route that went north around the Sasanids.
Justin seems not to have prospered in his doings. He adopted a general, Tiberius, and named him his successor. Then he abdicated, dying nine days later.
His wife, Sophia, was a powerful player in his reign. She shows up on the coinage.
Mints striking Justin II coins were Constantinople, Thessalonika, Nicomedia, Cyzicus, Theopolis (Antioch), Alexandria, Carthage, Constantine, Ravenna, Rome, Sicily, and a couple of rare ones.
During the reign of Justin II, the gold coins pretty much kept to the norms of the previous reigns back to Anastasius a half-century before. There were some rare silver coins of Constantinople. Most of the bronzes have full figures of Justin and Sophia enthroned facing, there are a few showing busts only, and a few small, rare ones, from small mints, with the traditional right-facing portrait.
I used to get these batches of bronzes from the Middle East. I never knew exactly where they came from. They’d have Byzantines and early Islamics mostly. The late Roman batches were always separate. It’s like, when the Byzantine bronzes appeared they drove the tiny little “minimi” of the late Roman period out of circulation. All those “barbarous” coins gone, replaced by the good-sized Byzantine stuff.
Anyway, Byzantine batches used to either be early period, middle period, or I’ll call them “later,” though not from the end of Byzantium. Those coins of the end are pretty rare.
“Early period” Byzantine coins could be characterized by full-weight (more or less) copper coins. I mean, a follis of Anastasius is kind of the same size as a follis of Phocas, we’ll get to him next time. But a follis of Heraclius is basically the same as the half follis of Justin II. So, the second period, which lasted for a while. Then there was a restoration of the full-sized follis in the anonymous Christ coins, then the follis disappeared and was replaced by the quartersized tetarteron. Later for them.
Just to say now that the early Byzantine bronzes are, on the whole, fairly common, and that the most prolific mints were on what is now Turkish territory.