252, Lot: 349. Estimate $100. Sold for $60. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

Constans II. 641-668. Æ 12 Nummi (18mm, 5.86 g, 6h). Alexandria mint. Struck 645/6. Constans standing facing, holding long staff surmounted by staurogram and globus cruciger / Large IB with cross potent on globe between; AΛEΞ. Bates, Copper issue B5; DOC 105; MIB 189; SB 1027. Near VF, dark brown patina.

As Bates wisely points out (p. 95): “It seems plausible that the standing-emperor Constans type was perpetuated after the Arab conquest without any essential changes in appearance. The die engravers and minters would have been the same men, or some of the same men, who had worked in the mint for the Byzantine regime. As a result, there is no sure objective indication by which to distinguish standing figure coins issued under Byzantine control in 645-46 from those that might have been struck subsequently under Arab control: there is no way to know if any such coins were struck after 646.