40 Nummi - Justinian I Rome, Bust Facing, ✶

The star control mark (✶) on this follis variant has been the subject of ongoing scholarly debate — some attribute it to a specific mint officina, others to a supervisory or quality-control function introduced under Justinian's extensive monetary reforms of 538 AD, which reorganized the follis and its fractions across multiple eastern and western mints. Rome itself was only intermittently under Byzantine control during this period, retaken from the Ostrogoths in 536 and contested repeatedly through the Gothic Wars.

The BMC Vandal reference is a cataloguing inheritance rather than an ethnic attribution — early British Museum organization grouped certain western issues under that heading before the field developed more precise Byzantine provincial distinctions.