Western Turks Under Sandan Vaku Deva: A Pair Of Counterstamped, Bimetallic Drachms (Ca 680-720)

As with so much of my collection of coins from the early medieval and dark ages, I find something new to me, only to discover that it is has been well-discussed here on CCF.

To whit, see @ancientnoob's original post from 2013 and then @finn235's follow-up thread when they picked up an example of this coin several years later:

https://goccf.com/t/139579
https://goccf.com/t/313641

These coins are interesting on multiple fronts beyond their age: trilingual inscriptions (Brahmi, Bactrian and Pahlavi), plus many have been contemporaneously counterstamped and up-valued with with a small gold plug. The two known counterstamps were described by Mitchiner and include #103, which is a three-sided rectangular gate (a "thunderbolt") and #104, which is a line segment with opposing arrows (a "balance").

Much is speculative about these pieces, with various sources spelling the leader's name differently and slight variations in the dating. In any case, I'm pretty glad to have added these to my collection along with a variety examples from other post-Sasanian dynasties. They are attributed as Göbl 244, MACW 1562, and Sunrise 1037, but here are a few acsearch, Zeno, and numista links for those who want more information and to see further examples:

https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=12310223
https://www.zeno.ru/search.php?searchid=187242
https://www.zeno.ru/showphoto.php?photo=81166
https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces80272.html

Here are two of the Drachma that I picked up. These show the gold plug (typically found on the ruler's neck) and counterstamps (typically found below the bust) particularly well: