Denier - Stephen III

Stephen III came to power as a teenager in 1162 and spent much of his reign fighting off rival claimants backed by the Byzantine emperor Manuel I Komnenos, who twice installed Stephen's uncles — Ladislaus II and Stephen IV — on the Hungarian throne in his place. The instability meant the royal mint operated under genuinely contested authority for stretches of this decade, and the attribution of individual deniers to specific years within the reign remains difficult.

The EK and CAC references place this piece within a tightly defined die grouping that distinguishes it from issues of the usurping Stephen IV, a distinction that eluded collectors for generations.