5 - ALTA IDADE MÉDIA e IMPERIO BIZANTINO - Séc Vº a Séc. Xº

Colecção Pinto de Souza

                                                                              A permanent family passion

In the summer of 1953, my maternal grandfather Joaquim Pinto de Souza, a portuguese civil construction contractor from Vila Nova de Gaia ( Nort of Portugal ), acquired from an owner in Marco de Canavezes (or Amarante), which we only know by the name Albino Torres, a very old and numerous numismatic collection that he joined to a small collection of  Portuguese monarchy coins which, over many years, he had managed to put together.

The acquired collection consisted of several hundred coins of the Portuguese monarchy, mainly in silver and copper, all accompanied by a handwritten label with the respective description, some coins of the Portuguese republic stamp, and several hundred Roman coins, mainly denarii in silver, kept in paper envelopes with some captions, such as "Alvarelhos", "Vila Real", "Cinfães", "Santarém" and others, believed to indicate the origin of its acquisition or discovery. 

My grandfather has emigrated to Venezuela in the late 1950s, so, the collection remained in the custody of my grandmother, who always kept it intact and practically inaccessible.

In 1981 my mother inherited the collection, and my father, also a collector of numismatics from the portuguese monarchy but, above all, of contemporary European issues in silver, integrated it into his own, separating the monarchical component that he classified and improved, from the republican component , which he ended up selling, like his contemporary silver coins, to acquire several gold pieces from the portuguese monarchy. He ignored the huge batch of Roman coins due to a complete lack of knowledge on the subject and consequent lack of interest.

The lot of Roman coins, consisting of 168 denarii, 116 antoninianii and about three hundred copper and bronze coins from the most diverse eras were offered to me in 1986, having already built a tiny collection of classical numismatics, mainly acquired at fairs of antiques that I assiduously visited in Porto, Vila do Conde and Estepona (Spain) where I spent summer vacations because, unlike my father, I had been awakened to the historical richness and artistic beauty of Roman coins from a very young age. I gained access to my grandfather's library with several books on the subject, with captions written in pencil by my grandfather in the margins of the pages, where I marked the coins I had and any comments.

Since then, I have been passionately taking care of the collection, which I gave my grandfather'name , Pinto de Souza, having limited it to 300 units, which I classified and archived so that I could visit them whenever I felt homesick. . All inherited coins were kept in the collection (about 180 copies of exceptional quality, beauty or rarity), or are carefully stored and identified. The rest are often sold and exchanged for copies in better condition or more rare, and invested in specialized literature.

In 2008, several Portuguese and Spanish collectors and friends, united by the same passion for this branch of collecting, decided to combine their main collections in a joint collection, which, for my pride, we named "Joint Collection of Classic Numismatics  Pinto de Souza". and which is part of the main assets of the Portuguese-Spanish foundation "Fundacion Roma Hespanica", aimed at promoting the study and dissemination of the Roman cultural heritage in the Iberian Peninsula, where I have the honor and pleasure of performing the functions of curator and expert of numismatic collections. Soon, we will have the opportunity to visit the Pinto de Souza collection in a traveling exhibition that will pass through Vila Nova de Gaia, Coimbra, Santarém and Lisbon, on dates that will depend on the sanitary rules imposed by the DGS in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Of the 600 Greek and Roman coins that make up the Pinto de Souza Collection, I will publish "one hundred and such" of those I consider the most beautiful and emblematic. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

João Sobral