83 Nummi Countermark, Sestertius of Vespasian, 69-79

The Ostrogoths lacked both the infrastructure and the ideological mandate to strike large bronze denominations from scratch, so they did the practical thing: they raided existing Roman coinage. Sestertii of the first-century emperors were still circulating in Italy in quantity, and countermarking them with a value designation — here 83 nummi — allowed Theoderic and his successors to integrate old imperial bronze into a functioning Ostrogothic monetary system without new production. The arrangement was politically useful too, preserving the face of a Roman emperor while asserting Gothic administrative control over valuation.

The 83-nummi denomination is an odd figure that has never been fully explained to scholarly consensus.