1 Semissis

Pseudo-imperial semisses issued by Germanic authorities in the sixth century were deliberately struck to mimic Byzantine weight standards and iconography, allowing them to circulate alongside legitimate imperial coinage in Mediterranean trade networks. The fiction of imperial authority was commercially useful — merchants and tax collectors on both sides of the frontier accepted them without distinction.

Attribution remains genuinely contested. Depending on findspot and die linkage, pieces of this type have been assigned to Ostrogothic, Visigothic, and Frankish workshops, often revised more than once in the scholarly literature.