MORTON & EDEN OCTOBER 2026 BYZANTINE SALE

Byzantine coins at Morton & Eden, London, 7 October, 2026

A major sale of Byzantine coins from the Porphyra collection is to take place in London on 7th October. Covering coins from the time of Constantine the Great up to the fall of Constantinople in 1453 it is the most comprehensive offering of its type for many years, comprising over 400 lots and covering more than a thousand years of history.

The collection was built up over a 10-year period and previous auction provenance is recorded for each piece. Among the highlights are:

Lot 1. An unrecorded solidus of Constantine the Great (307-337) struck in Constantinople just before he moved his capital there from Rome in AD 330. (estimate £4000-6000)

Lot 4. An exceptionally well struck and perfectly preserved solidus of Julian II, the last openly pagan emperor, issued from Constantinople and with a reverse showing a soldier dragging a Persian captive by the hair, which relates to his campaign against the Sasanians (estimate £8,000-12,000)

Lot 7. An extremely rare solidus of Procopius, the usurper in Constantinople who was put down by Valens in 366 after a brief reign – and whose coin proclaims his reign as "Reparatio Fel Temp" or "happy times are here again" – but not for long! (estimate £20,000-30,000)

Lot 90. An extremely rare bronze devotional medallion of Christ and the Adoration of the Magi (of which only two others are recorded), dating from the 6th-7th centuries and in the style of mosaics found in the church of St Apollinare in Ravenna (estimate £4000-6000)

Lot 154. An important Arab-Byzantine "de-christianised" solidus struck as the first experimental coinage by the Arabs during the reign of the first Umayyad caliph al-Mu'awiya (AD 661-680 and AH 41-60) which repeats the designs of the coinage of Heraclius but with all signs of Christ's cross removed (estimate £40,000-60,000)

Lot 217. Solidus of Theodosius III (715-717) who was sometimes referred to as "the reluctant" since he was proclaimed emperor against his will. His reign lasted less than two years until he was able to abdicate in favour of Leo III, spending his final years in a monastery in Ephesus.

Lot 272. An extremely rare silver miliaresion of Alexander (912-913), in exceptional condition and possibly the finest known in private hands (estimate £12,000-18,000)

Lot 273. A spectacular solidus of Constantine VII (913-959) struck in 914 under the regency of his mother Zoe Karbonopsina (estimate £20,000-30,000)

Lot 300. A particularly beautiful and rare silver miliaresion of Romanus III (1028-1034) with a full-length figure of the Virgin and Child (estimate £4000-6000)

The sale ends with coins of Trebizond, the Byzantine state that survived the taking of Constantinople by the Ottomans in 1453. There are no coins of the last emperor Constantine XI but the last lot in the sale (lot 410) is a scarce silver asper of John IV Megas Comnenus of Trebizond (1429-1459) whose reign straddles the fall of the City (estimate £200-300).

For more information on this sale, please contact Tom Eden on tom@mortonandeden.com.

To visit the firm's website, see:
https://www.mortonandeden.com/

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