Would you like to support the channel and my work? Consider buying some channel Merch! You get a cool T-Shirt or Mug and you help me make more Ancient Numismatics content. Thank you! leob.creator-spring.com/ 💰 Join my Patreon: www.patreon.com/classicalnumismatics Or maybe "Buy me a Coffee": www.buymeacoffee.com/classicalnumismatics
Hello! Would you like to participate in a bit of historical research? It could make an interesting video. Specifically, how the dodecahedron may have been a coin wear calibration tool. They were often found in hoards with a single hexagonal plate from one found in a hoard. They were typically used on the outskirts of the empire, where coins would be used longer and metals were scarcer. You can buy a 3D printed replica at 1:1 scale to test this theory. I am happy to have found this channel. Excellent content!
In reality the first primitive coins with actual motives on it came into existence in the 13th or 14th century during the prime of the (true) Roman Empire with its centers in nowadays Russia and Konstantinopel, the latter founded by the mid-end of the 14th century. That’s the reason why during that time also text printing was invented. The technique and basic idea is the same. Even mainstream historians admit that prior to that there was an absence of coins for centuries. The call it Dark Age but in reality this was the onset of agriculture, civilization and statehood. Mainstream historians also cannot explain how golden coins should ever come from Italy since Italy has no gold resources. Like most of the Western European countries.
After WWI Gerald Brenan, a discharged British solder, moved to the south of Spain. He published South From Granada about the early years of this life in 1957. In this book he talks about how he would periodically get punic and roman republic coins in his change when shopping in local markets.
@@rumski2926 Here's the full quote from the book, "I will close this chapter with a curious and, I believe, unique story. One day I went to the village shop in Yegan to buy some cigarettes and I was handed back with my change some unfamiliar coins. On examining these at home I saw that they were Punic and Iberian cities, minted under the Roman Republic, and thus the first coins to be minted in Spain except Greek cities of Catalonia. When I returned to the shop and asked if they had any more they produced twenty or thirty. An offer to buy them at a pesata apiece brought in another twenty from other people. The interesting question was - where had they come from? Had they been circulating quietly in the neighbourhood since they were first minted, or had they come from a hoard? After some inquiry I came on a man who remembered that one of his ancestors had left a collection of old coins wen he died and that his family, not seeing any other use for them, had decided to spend them." This would have taken place in the early 1920's. I don't know, could be a fib - but I myself remember getting 19th century Silver quarters a few times when I counting what I collected on my paper route. I always figured it was random elderly people who had really old piles of change? People do weird things, make mistakes...
@@cburnett11001 so they weren’t in circulation the whole time like i said or they’d be worn past recognition someone had a collection of historical coins and ppl who didn’t know what they were started using them to make change, again the whole story still sounds like a lie he made up for the book probably 🧢
In Turkey, Kütahya, you can still frequently stumble upon Roman coins while randomly working your field. Some people we know even stumpled upon ceramic pots full of it.
Coins can have a long circulation. Until 1971, when Britain decimalised the currency, I used to get coins from Edward VII (1901-10) all the time. Sometimes I’d get pennies of Victoria (1837-1901), mostly from the later period, known as Bun Pennies, referring to her hair style, issued 1860-94. My dad had several George III coins, huge thick coins, which people had given him in change in the 1920s.
I've had American coins from 70 years previous hit my pocket from change over the years. Rarely, though. But the wear on them was usually minimal; in a random pile, the most-worn coin could be from a couple years ago.
Sure- it wasn't until coins stopped really being made with anything inherently valuable that people would keep the ones with silver, for example, in them and they'd slowly disappear from circulation. That and when certain coins became collectible. Kind of a shame, but then it does preserve coins too- out of circulation, they're not handled and banged about in sacks to be worn more and more...
Yes, as a child I saved Victoria coins often worn smooth. Far better to collect new coins. The new coins today sell for good sums but worn coins do not fit into coin collections at all.
In Japan, the old copper Mon from as far back as the Sengoku Era were in circulation as late as the 1950s! This was especially so in the country side where larger denomination coins were impractical.
After the fall of the Roman empire there were large areas of Britain and northern Europe where few coins were minted for hundreds of years. I suspect old roman coins would have circulated there for a long, long time.
Augustus collected coins, I figure anyone interested in Antiquities would end up exposed to numismatics and a subset of those antiquarians would jump into this world.
My grandparents had a shop in the old gold mining town town of Ballarat Australia in the 1950s. And when people presented old coins in their change, they’d accept them and set them aside as curios in glass jar. Decades later, as kids we’d play with that jar. There was nothing any great value, but I was always intrigued by the trade tokens issued by Australian businesses in the early to mid 1800s when the colonies were short of minted coinage. These were mostly around the same size, shape and colour as a penny and accepted by my grandparents at that value. There were quite a lot of old British coins and even a few old Chinese green tinged copper coins with holes in the centre, which I suppose came over with the thousands of Chinese miners back in the day. I guess people came across them from time to time, and knowing my grandparents would take them, turned them in to buy cigarettes, sweets and newspapers a century later.
When he knew the UK was decimalising, my grandfather tried to collect an old Penny from every year that was still in circulation. The oldest was an extremely smooth young head Victoria from 1860 - the very first year that type of penny had been introduced. The date was clearly visible and I still have it and all the others he collected. It must have been in regular circulation for about 109 years! (My grandfather died in 1969). Victorian pennies of 70-100 years old were still common up to decimalisation.
I have recently seen a documentary on decimalization and the few years right after it when old coins still circulated, it must have been crazy. And a bit of a shame, really. It would have been so interesting to routinely handle money thats a hundred years old.
@@ClassicalNumismatics It was. In 1860 the UK was just about at the peak if its power. By 1969 the empire had largely been dissolved. Coins were no respecters of class, wealth or power. Old pennies were as likely to have passed through the hands of a mid Victorian Prime Minister as through the hands of the poorest beggar. (Ironically, the person least likely to have handled them was the monarch whose head was on the coins, because they had aides and ladies in waiting who carried the cash!) Decimalisation was a significant psychological cut off point with the past. It was made a little easier by the continued use of traditional symbolism on the new metric coinage.
@@ClassicalNumismatics It's been over 50 years since decimalisation. Although almost every coin has changed design in that time (e.g. £1, 2018, 50p 1997, 10 and 5p 1990), we can still spend coppers (1p, 2p) and they go back to 1969. 70's pennies are becoming rare in the daily change, but 80's ones are still around commonly enough to see them every week. 20p was a completely new denomination introduced in 1982 which has change metal composition in the early 90's, so 80's 20p's are quite rare in circulation too.
It's funny that during the era of the Flavians a Ptolemaic bronze (and an early one, at that) was still circulating as money. I would imagine the person who deposited it just saw something roughly the size and appearance of an official coin, and tossed it in a pile. It reminds of the times I've found old Canadian coins in my change.
I like to think either the shop was so busy they weren't looking too closely at the smallest-denomination base metal coins, or maybe the shopkeeper took it and liked the look of it enough that he decided it was worth "spending" a coin on. At first I imagined it might be an old "lucky penny" situation but you wouldn't keep that in your till bowl because it would probably get handed out as change by mistake!
Growing up in Portland, Maine during the 1950s & 1960s, we regularly spent Canadian coins and received them in change. I had a bad experience in Long Island, NY when I was about 12 years old. A store owner purposely (or accidentally) gave me a Canadian dime in change and then refused to accept it later despite my explanation that where I came from these coins were regularly circulated not to mention I knew I had received it in that store. I hated how you could be disbelieved and your evidence discarded by adults just because you were a kid and powerless.
Canadian shopkeeper in a town with a lot of American tourists. We treat American quarters as equivalent to Canadian money before we worry about conversion
Very nice Hadrian denarius from the first series! In Réka Devnia Hoard, buried in AD 251 under Trajan Decius and found in 1929 in the Village of Reka Devnia, Bulgaria, there were also legionary denarii minted by Mark Antony, while the latest emperor was Herennius Etruscus. Actually, although it is a 3rd century hoard, most of the 81,044 coins were denarii from the early empire, from Nero onwards..., this is a sign that the coins were carefully selected for hoarding due to their good silver content.
It's been calculated that of the amount of loot taken from Rome by barbarians, only about half has been found / accounted for. The Germanic tribes had a fine old custom of only telling the oldest son where their treasure stash was, only telling it on their deathbed. Plus that whole area was wetlands. A lot, I suspect, simply sunk into the mud when no one disturbed it.
I remember going to some of London's flea markets and they had baskets full of pre-decimal coins. You could even find worn early victorian pieces. Fascinating.
A great topic, fantastic. Another UK hoard the Snettisham Hoard is attributed to a Roman Jeweller who selected the coins with the highest silver content at the current time (to melt down to manufacturer jewellery). A great topic.
When it comes to ancient Chinese monetry, collectors sometimes can find BanLiang and WuZhu coins dating back to Qin and Han dynasty (221 bc-ad 220) in hoards from late Song dynasty around 12 century. And Coins from Tang dynasty (618-907 ce) can also be found in nearly every Song hoard, always in good condition. It is not strange that when a economy is extremly prosperous, metal coins are never enough, no matter how many new coins the authority issue.
Indeed, Ive heard about it. Since most of the trade was conducted with strings of cash, people likely didnt bother checking which kinds of coins were in the strings. If the number was right, and the weight was ok, off it went.
I have a legionary coin of Mark Antony and didn't imagine it could have circulated as far away as Britain several hundred years later. It's interesting that at the time, they remained in circulation because of the lower silver content, which made them less precious. Nowadays they're valuable to collectors because of the history of Antony and Cleopatra, which was something the ancients probably couldn't afford to bother about.
This was really interesting. I have a handful of ancient Roman coins myself and have always been fascinated by the idea that the extreme wear on some suggested they circulated for a very, very long time- that who knows how many thousands of people held them and bought who knows what mundane or interesting things with them. It always felt to me like an amazing connection to those people of the past- moreso than most anything else would. Thanks!
I just discovered your channel, you might not see this but I love your work! Very informative in the world of ancient coins. I’m trying to learn more about this area of coin collecting and you’re making the journey a lot easier!
Really awesome video, I just got done reading about the length of circulation of US Large Cents for an hour and then I come on youtube and find this excellent video! Well done, love your channel and the quality of all your videos!
Early imperial bronzes were sometimes still circulating in the late 3rd century. You can also find early imperial bronzes with Dominate-era countermarks for retariffing. For instance, I have seen an as of Nero with a 'XIII' on it, meaning it had a value of 13 folles.
This is a fascinating topic, and I have a couple denarii in my collection which directly support your conclusion for silver coinage. First is a well worn denarius of M. Herennius (Herennius 1 in RSC), minted around 108 - 107 BC. The interesting part is the IMP VES countermark on the reverse of the coin. All the information I can find about that countermark indicates it was applied sometime around the year 74 AD in Ephesus. Which would mean this coin was still seeing some circulation 180 years after being minted! Second is a very worn Marc Antony Legionary denarius (Leg IX, Marc Antony coin 37 in RSC) which also bears this same IMP VES countermark. Also on the reverse of the coin. Perhaps most interesting is the countermark shows wear, so the countermark was applied a century after the coin was minted and apparently went on to circulate more after that! The Herennius denarius has been in my collection about 4 years and the legionary denarius has been part of my collection more like 15 years.
Its indeed a crazy idea. Imagine whoever put that Ptolemaic coin in that jar. Whoever owned that coin when it was brand new was likely a child when Alexander the Great and his generals were alive. But in 79AD Alexander was a legendary figure for the Romans.
The hoard of Pompeii's thermopolium is entirely exposed at the MANN (National archaeological museum of Naples). There is a great numismatic section which is open 2 days/week. I think that getting in touch with the museum direction or asking in loco, some more info or pubblication could be extracted. I had never seen so many coins all together in one place 😂. I took some pictures myself and it is interesting to see the rest of the info around the hoard (frescoes of thermopolium , info about prices in Pompeii etc)
These coins (mostly the silver ones) were also still circulating after the end of the Roman Empire. They circulated in Central Europe basiclly until the Carolingian coin reform. Before that there were a lot of different coins that were issued by different people and there was nothing that would keep the old Roman coins from circulating as there was no homogeneous coin standard and it was only about the silverweight. This can also be backed up by early medieval Frankish graves containing Roman denarii as grave objects.
Great video! The best i've ever gotten was a 100 year old coin in my change (a wheat cent from 1909) but it's incredible to think how the same reason coins disappear from circulation today is the reason they wrnt into hordes then!
And its a bit sad to think that people now need to resort to hoarding simple copper. It shows how little care governments give into preserving the value of their coinage. Isnt it true that soon hoarding the 5 cent piece will also be a good deal for its metal value?
Very well documented and you went to some real trouble here to get dates and numbers and actual coins to represent the poor condition slugs which many of the coins became overtime. Great job.
The funny thing about hoards is that coins actually show up in reasonably good shape! But yeah, it was quite research intensive. Fortunately people seem to have enjoyed it. Thanks for watching :)
@@ClassicalNumismatics I very much enjoyed it. I’ve been somewhat intimidated by ancient coins, thinking that you would have to have encyclopedic knowledge to even date the dang things by you show me some resources and more importantly, showed up the process and took away a lot of the mystery, and made it feel accessible to mortals
I have a metal detector find from England that was represented as a Roman coin blank. No, it’s just so worn as to be almost indistinguishable from a blank.
After Rome abandoned britain in the early 5th century AD, its coinage continued circulating for many, many years, so its not surprising to find many of these worn to a flat disk
I literally paid a friend a Roman denarius (Had) for a ride into town when my own car broke down. So, the answer is, Roman coinage is _still_ in circulation.
Great video. The high quality silver coins stashed away would be used with a value above the nominal? Or just melted? In the day by day a merchant could ask for 3 bad silver coins or 1 good silver coin for the same product?
Great sci-fi book: *Lest Darkness Fall*. An archeologist is in modern Rome is hit by lightning. That's all the explanation we get. He wakes up during the time when Germanic tribes had invaded Rome, but the Empire was still considered strong and the Germans were becoming part of society. He starts of by creating brandy, introduces modern mathematics to bookkeepers, ends up general of the armies. Reshapes the gov't. Saves the day. The book was written just before WW II. I often think the writer L. Sprague deCamp must have been considering the coming storm. Great fun to read and his facts are correct (for the time he wrote).
17:38 - you called out Gresham’s law after I had made the comment. Thank you for that. It was glossed over so hopefully people catch that you referenced it or see my initial comment to help educate themselves on monetary debasement. The Cantillion effect is another one for people to look into. Thank you again for sharing. Extremely interesting, and valuable information. History certainly repeats itself, and we stand on the shoulders of giants.
What do you have old chap? I have 100 sovs, but for fun I bought a repro eides mars (sp?) yesterday, just to go in my "wall display of interesting small objects"
The fact that some of these coins have been changing hand for Millennia, tons of them are only worth 5-10 bucks and those are used as kind tips is crazy.
I havent finished the video, but i just wanted to share that i remember reading something in school about a Portuguese law from the 1500's where they said that roman coins should not be used with face value and should have their value defined by weight, and that was evidence that they were still using roman coins in rural areas in Portugal at least during the renaissance, i can't find the sources for that though
@@Bawhoppen that could be a possibility, but i wonder in what context there would be a large enough influx of Papal State coinage around Portugal to justify a law
@@Bawhoppen look at the latest video, apparently the spanish defaced roman coins with a 4 on them and used them as worth 4 pesos in the 1600's, maybe the law was related to these spanish coins entering circulation in Portuguese territory.
Thank you for the great video! As a lover of history, learning about Roman coins is awesome. I actually thought from the title that you were going to explain how long Roman coins were used after the fall of the empire.
The amount of wear is interesting to see. My only reference is old British pre decimal coinage I've come across which is usually going back to Victoria but mostly 20th Century. The bronze coins could be far more worn than anything on this video yet wouldn't even be 100 years old at decimalisation (Feb 15th? 1971).
I had many Victorian Bun heads over 100 years old in my change that were at least good and a few V Fine that must have been stashed away for years before coming into circulation.
coins remaining in circulation after they loose their actual value isnt that uncommon, here in germanny you still occasionally see some pfennige or even the occasional 2 Reichspfennig disguising itself as a 5ct piece especially if you work at any place that handles a lot of money, you can see those every other month, often more commonly.
Oldest coin I’ve found in circulation here in the US was an 1879 Indian Penny, incredibly worn but the date was just visible. When I grew up in a retirement neighborhood 20 years ago, my mom worked in the clubhouse selling concessions & newspapers. Older residents would frequently buy stuff with gold/silver certificates. She always brought them home for me!
Another terrific installment. Thanks! Quick question... Would the odd sestersius from, let's say the reign Antoninus, technically still be 'legal tender' during the reign of Aurelian? Or would people consider that just as obsolete as someone in the UK today handling a shilling from the era of Queen Victoria?
It's been awhile since I read the book "Ring of Fire" about a couple European brothers traveling in Indonesia in the 60s-70s, but if I remember correctly they said a tribe they met deep in the jungles had a coin that originated from the middle-east that was around 2000 years old. The impression was that it was in circulation, or at least being traded and not lost, for that amount of time.
Really interesting topic! I live in Trier and never cared much for the coin collection until I stumbled upon this video. Went to the museum today to have a look. The coins were found by a hobby archeologist in a pile of dirt left over from excavation work for building a new hospital. He brought them into the museum in a plastic bucket, that's also in the museum.
@@hannibalb8276 I read somewhere on the internet that he was promised a million Euros but only received a five figure sum in the end. The coins being valued at around 5 million.
Bravo. Awesome video. In the Mediterranean Ancient Greek coins seem to have circulated for centuries due to the standardisation of precious metal coinage - tetradrachms and drachmae etc could be issued by any city state and were universally accepted. Presumably the same thing happened with Roman precious metal coins. The Roman denarius seems to be a Roman equivalent of the Greek drachma, as they’re about the same size and weight. About 20 years ago I bought some coins from a hoard of Roman bronzes found in Provence - asses and dupondius, all dating to the reign of Gaius (Caligula) - the most common coin was the Marcus Agrippa commemorative with Neptune, minted under Gaius.
Ukraine definitely has alot of Silver Denarius from the Roman trading. I personally have purchased multiple coins from there from good sellers. Most of these coins definitely look to have circulated for long periods of time. Thanks again for another great video.
As a child in pre-1971 England you'd regularly get 'bun pennies' in your change, coins dating back to the later Victoria era so approximately 100 years ago. Older pennies from the early Victorian era showing a young Victoria would be less common, anything earlier being quite rare. Anything in circulation that was 100 years old or more tended to be very worn.
Back when the Boston, MA subway system used tokens, I occasionally received a French ten-centime coin from the token seller. The French coin was the same size as the subway token, and the subway system didn't bother to pull them out of circulation.
I know a lot of Nero’s silver pieces where defaced, was there a similar effort with his Gold aureus or were they just remelted if the got into state coffers?
The aureus was a much later coin. Silver coins were minted locally but gold ones were only centrally minted. Over time, the silver content was heavily reduced so a coin almost pure silver in 200AD was base metal with a thin silver wash by 300. Diocletian tried an edict of maximum prices, but this ignored supply and demand. Constantine invented the aureus. This was never devalued. Nero was popular with the masses and much of what Tacitus and Suetonius wrote is untrue. After Nero committed suicide three individuals claimed to be him, miraculously alive. You don’t impersonate someone much hated. The damage to the coins is unlikely to be caused by the ordinary Romans.
@@ClassicalNumismatics Well sir... after watching your video i have decided to start collecting myself, not before i watched a whole bunch of your other videos for starters on all the do and donts. I decided on an historical theme that im interested in which is ancient middle eastern history and went on to ma shops! My first purchase was a judean bronze prutah from the reign of john horcenus circa 130BC, they were relatively cheap starting from 9 euros and mine i bought from a dealer for 50 euros after comparing the quality of different price ranges. My first coin! :) A week later i saw a silver Phoenician shekel circa 350BC with an inscription mentioning the city of Arwad which is also mentioned in the bible. Its price starts at 1800 euros... a similar coin with only a tiny bit of the inscription barely visible costs 500 euros, and now im pondering weather to buy the cheaper one just to say i have it or the expensive one knowing that most likely no one else but me will ever take interest in it or realize the significance of having the full inscription. To feel beter i bought another bronze coin for 90 euros this time also from the period of john horcenus only with a later inscription. Long story short thank you for the inspiration.
Wow, you wonder how many undiscovered coin treasures are still waiting to be discovered. Thank you for the hard work you put into making these videos. Very interesting.
If countries like Italy, Spain, Greece or Turkey had more reasonable laws regarding metal detecting like the UK does, we would see a deluge of wonderful treasures coming up
I have been reading more books on money and continue to try to figure out "How much did this buy back then" and one of my biggest questions was how long did older coins circulate. You would think that if you had a republican denarius and you lived in the 100s that you probably would never want to use it unless you had to. Would a merchant give you "more bang for your buck" if you gave them that republican denarius than if you gave them a "current" one say under Marcus Aurelius? The hoard you showed gives an indication that they would accept it, but I do wonder how they treated it... Thanks for the research and coins! What a fun hobby that is truly endless in its understanding of history and adventure!
There's a historical account that fifty years after the late Marc Antony minted denarii with his face on it, Romans were still using it in preference to the pure silver denarii recently minted. Marc Antony had been compelled to debase his denarii with an amount of lead in order to pay his troops during the Civil War. Since Antony denarii was not totally pure silver yet still used at face value, Romans preferred to use the Antony denarius coin and hold on to the pure silver denarius coins they possessed as long as possible.
10:38 I found a Marc Anthony denarius near the Fort in Eining/Bavaria. The backside has only a small bump left where the eagles body was and on the front you can barely make out the lower bow and a few paddles, and it got a bit smaller in diameter
The oldest coin I've found in circulation in the US was a 100 year old penny. When I was young, the coinage was still silver and I don't really think of the clad stuff or paper as real money. There were probably Romans who thought the same way. Inflation is an ancient evil.
There is a passage on Meditations, written by Marcus Aurelius, where one of his old teachers compared people of lower moral standards to coins of lower silver content, as they looked "tarnished and ugly". Ironically, Marcus himself had to debase his currency due to the many wars he had to fight on the frontiers and the economic downturn brought by the Antonine plague.
Monetary circulation is such an interesting topic but, alas, so little bibliography about it. Also, I've heard stories of roman coins circulating in rural areas well into the Modern Era but I don't know how much truth there's on that
it would be interesting to know the very last time an everyday purchase was made with western roman coins, and what was purchased. My guess it it would be well into the dark ages or early medieval times.
18:38 that's some high quality artistry on the right side. compare to the left, which is premitive. Egypt must have been so much more advanced than Rome back then.
My grandfather was a sailor, who at one time was a crewmember on a steamer that sailed between Denmark and England in the early 1930'ies. He brought his pocket change back home with him to Denmark and kept it as memorabilia. Some of the coins are from the 1700's!!
Seigneurage? Or, is it spelled otherwise? I would love it if you would put captions of these terms on screen, I’m a raw novice, this is my first introduction to numismatics. Thank you🙂
When I was a child in the Soviet Union it was quite frequent to get in change a 20s-50s pre-1961 reform coins. Also Bulgarian stotinki coins could be often found in change due they were quite similar to Soviet kopeks. By the way rate ruble/Bulgarian lev was also 1 to 1. In tsarist pre-1917 Russia change also circulated for 100-150 years. Copper coins deposits are found of Nicholas 2 and Catherine the Great coins together. It's quite funny since Catherine's 5 kopek's weight is 60 grams and Nicholas' just 16 gr. Thanks for the videos!
Fun fact, if you had access to quite a lot of silver coins, you could file away 1-2% and get away with it... That's 1-2% extra money. If you were a bank for example, you wouldn't actually need to own the coins to get a literal cut.
