Semissis - Anastasius I Dicorus Constantinoplis, Type ⳨ inverted

Anastasius I inherited a treasury depleted by decades of military expenditure and promptly overhauled the Byzantine monetary system in 498, reforming the copper coinage entirely — but the gold semissis continued largely unchanged, a fraction denomination tied to the solidus at a ratio fixed since the Constantinian period. The inverted cross type designated here as BCV#6 is a die classification distinguishing the orientation of the christogram or control mark, a detail that matters enormously for attribution but would have been invisible to the merchant weighing the coin by the gram.