As a whole, the Carolingian gold coins in the Ilanz hoard, now in the Rätisches Museum at Chur, have been dealt with only in a rather casual fashion up to now. The most recent study is one by myself, published in 1977, but this was limited to reproducing the legends of all the specimens, to identifying the dies and to posing a number of questions without any claim to having provided answers to them. Such a neglect of valuable numismatic material is surprising when one considers that these gold coins are the only ones certainly struck during the reign of Charlemagne, that they are of extreme rarity, with perhaps not more than ten other authentic specimens known, and that they bear legends that are, at least in part, without parallel on any other Carolingian coins. Even if their issue was brief and localised, and so cannot be regarded as representing one of the more important of Charlemagne's coinages, their association with a particular economic and political situation allows us to document the final stages of the transition from the gold monometallism of the Constantinian tradition to the silver monometallism that was Frankish in origin and Carolingian in fulfilment.

The study of these coins seems to have been inadequate from the outset. Jecklin, who was responsible for cataloguing them immediately after the hoard was discovered, left gaps and ambiguities in his description.