Denier - Philip of Taranto

Philip of Taranto held the Despotate of Epirus not through inheritance but through conquest, seizing it from his own Angevin-aligned relatives during the fractious power struggles that followed the dismemberment of the Byzantine Empire after 1204. His coinage was largely derivative of the Angevin billon issues circulating in southern Italy and the Latin Balkans — a deliberate political signal of his dynastic allegiances rather than any local minting tradition.

Billon content in these Epirote issues is notoriously variable, and surviving examples frequently show flans struck from poorly refined metal.