The Ups and Downs of Studing Kapodistrias Dies
A first attempt at presenting the dies of Kapodistrian coins was made by V. Petousis, but was so fragmentary and clumsy that the reader could not even understand the way the dies were linked.
A work by F. Katsouros was more systematic but the material at his disposal was rather limited.
Thus it was that twenty-six years ago P. Tzamalis wrote …
Perhaps one day there will be a full and systematic study of the die types of the coins of the Greek State that will solve the problems…
It seems that little by little the time is coming. The pioneer in the attempt to die-link the coins of Kapodistrias was the current Vice President of the Hellenic Numismatic Society, Mr. Zacharias L. Oraiopoulos, who wrote a series of articles in 1984 on the 5 Lepta 1828, 10 Lepta 1828, 1 Lepton 1828 and 5 Lepta 1830. In 1993 the attempt was continued by Mr. Theodoros Pitidis-Poutous. In 2002 the baton was passed to Mr. Peter A. Chase.
With the publication of Mr. Chase’s article the basic study of Kapodistrian coins of 1828 and 1830 and some of 1831 has moved substantially forward. There are now remains the rest of 1831 to be researched. Of course, there is a long way still to go since the aforementioned studies of die linkages cannot be considered complete while new dies and new combinations continue to come to light.
A good example is the new variety of 1 Lepton 1830, presented by Mr. Chase. We do, however, have a good basis now and it is to be hoped that the researchers mentioned above will continue their work and that new researchers will enter the arena, so that one day we shall have a full corpus of Kapodistrian coins.
First published in Numismatica Khronika 22/2003 by P. Tzamalis.
We reprint this article with the kind permission of the author Mr. P. Tzamalis