Coin Talk

Encapsulated Neutron Irradiated 1943 Mercury Dime


I found this to be an interesting relic of a very specific time and place.

My family hails from Chatanooga Tennessee and a little town called Rossville right across the border in Georgia. Some people here may be familiar with this area as it is very steeped in history, particularly regarding the Civil War with places like Lookout Mountain and of course Chickamauga Battlefield Park in Fort Oglethorpe, the site of the Civil War Battle of Chickamauga, second only to the Battle of Gettysburg in terms of casualties.

These Irradiated Dimes are from the Oakridge Museum of Atomic Energy in Oakridge Tennessee which proudly pronounced itself the 'Atomic City', which was relatively close to where they lived. Apparently my grandfather, who passed on long before I was born, made a visit to the Oakridge Museum if Atomic Energy and picked this up while there....

Here are two old gold coins, from England and the United States, the guinea and the half eagle. Both coins have a similar size and had similar values.



England introduced the guinea on February 6, 1663. The name “guinea” came from the African nation which was the source of much of the gold that went into these coins initially. It originally had a value of one British pound or 20 shillings. As it was the United States, the bimetallic system did not work well. Over time the value of the coin varied from 20 to as high as 30 shillings. Ultimately the value settled down to 21 shillings.

This coin contained 0.2472 ounces of gold. The rule of thumb was that it was a quarter ounce of gold. In terms of the U.S. dollar, it was valued at about $5 in the 1790s and early 1800s give or take.

This guinea dated 1798 is a common date. It is called a “spade guinea” because of the shape of the British shield on the reverse. The British stopped issuing these coins not...

A few weeks ago I posted a thread on how bad was Nero. After thinking a bit about that one, I decided it was only fair to post a thread on his possible opposite, Antoninus Pius. From the previous posting we discovered that Nero may not have been quite as bad as he has been portrayed to have been, except for the matricide part, which is pretty hard to overlook. As we all know Antoninus Pius has the reputation of being squeaky clean, ultra virtuous, without blemish and well, very "pious". But was he all that upright a person? Does he deserve that reputation? Let's take a look.

First of all the primary sources. What do they have to say? Interestingly, not very much. For Nero, and other not very nice emperors, we have far more abundant sources. Since Suetonius and Tacitus liked slumming it, vicariously, with the more murderous and scandalous emperors of the First Century AD, we have a good deal of information ranging from the anecdotal and incidental to the hand rubbing and...

This year sees the 800th anniversary of an event that, though seldomly taught in high school history classes, shaped world history to an extent comparable to Alexander’s conquest of Asia, the Punic Wars, or the expansion of the British Empire in the 18th century. In 1220, the Mongols under Genghis Khan annexed the Khwarezmian Empire, paving the way to becoming a world power whose realms eventually stretched from Beijing to Baghdad, and from the Volga to the Indus river:

Social isolation gave me enough time to read Peter Jackson: The Mongols and the Islamic World: From Conquest to Conversion (Yale University Press, 2017), which I can strongly recommend to anyone interested in this part of history. While reading this book, I recognized that as a medieval coin collector, I could illustrate much of the history of the Mongol westward conquests with coins from my collection, especially since I recently developed a side interest in “Eastern” medieval...

The iconography on the reverse of this Roman provincial coin of Gordian III minted in Thessalonica perfectly epitomizes the Pythian games, for it depicts a tripod and apples and is explicitly labeled ΠVΘΙΑ (Pythia).


Gordian III, AD 238-244.
Roman provincial Æ 25.6 mm, 10.61 g, 2 h.
Macedon, Thessalonica, AD 238-244.
Obv: AVT K M ANT ΓΟΡΔIANOC, laureate, draped and cuirassed bust right.
Rev: ΘЄCCAΛΟΝΙΚЄΩΝ ΝЄ, tripod surmounted by five apples; Π-V/Θ-Ι/Α across field.
Refs: Touratsoglou, Thessaloniki 80; Varbanov 4523; Moushmov 6815.

The Pythian games were held at Delphi, a sanctuary called "Pytho" in poetic language. According to myth, it was here that the god Apollo had killed the serpent Python. Several Roman provincial coins share the common reverse motif of Apollo preparing to slay Python, as I have...

This church was founded in 1722. It was built in 1723 and is known as The Old North Church. It is Boston's oldest surviving church and it's the most visited historical site in Boston. It is an Episcopal Church and still holds services.

On the evening of April 18, 1775, when the church sexton, Robert Newman, and Vestryman Capt. John Pulling, Jr. climbed the steeple and held high two lanterns as a signal for Paul Revere that the British were marching to Lexington and Concord by sea across the Charles River and not by land. This fateful event ignited the American Revolution.

In 1775, on the eve of Revolution, the majority of the congregation were loyal to the British King and many held official positions in the royal government, including the Governor of Massachusetts, making Robert Newman’s loyalty to the Patriot cause even more extraordinary. The King gave the Old North Church its silver that was used at services and a bible.

Each year over 150,000 visitors come to this site to...

Something nice came in the post today. After disinfecting the envelope and very carefully emptying the contents on a table, I was able to enjoy the latest addition to my yet small collection. A Lysimachos tetradrachm. Lysimachos was one of Alexander the Great's succesors (diadochoi). His coins are quite interesting and artistic and he wasn't shy to put his name on them. For these reasons they are usually a bit pricey, so when I found this one for the right amount (a bit over £300) I was happy to snatch it as I have seen ones in lesser condition going for double that. I even got it from a retail shop. With the prices that coins fetch nowdays in auctions, I still hope I did well.



I got this one because it has a decent amount of detail. Alex is well rendered and I particularly like the Athena side where you can see the spear in good detail plus the little Nike that she is holding. Usually these are the bits that are very worn out.

Going back to the...

May 22nd 337 AD was the day of the death of Constantine the Great. But was he really that "Great" ? Hard to tell ; he always had a controversial reputation. Bruno Bleckmann wrote in his Sources of the history of Constantine : "ancient sources for his reign are abundant and detailed, but they have been strongly influenced by the official propaganda of the period and are often one-sided; no contemporaneous histories or biographies dealing with his life and rule have survived". Many stories had been told about him, but were they the truth, only the truth and nothing but the truth ? Not sure at all. Here is an example : Some of the ancient sources detail plots that Galerius made on Constantine's life in the months following Diocletian's abdication. They assert that Galerius assigned Constantine to lead an advance unit in a cavalry charge through a swamp on the middle Danube, made him enter into single combat with a lion, and attempted to kill him in hunts and wars....

I took the longest drive I've made in two and a half months on Thursday. My wife and I drove 75 miles each way to take treats and necessities to my 91 year old father-in-law who is locked down in an assisted living facility. It was great to get behind the wheel of my CT-6 Cadillac and open it up to 70 miles per hour. It's been a long while.

At any rate, here's another article from the archives.

The twenty dollar gold piece, which is also known as the double eagle, is the heaviest, most impressive coin that The United States has ever issued for general circulation. Containing almost an ounce of pure gold, the double eagle became the coin of choice for bank reserves and large business transactions from its introduction in 1850 until the end of U.S. regular issue gold coinage in 1933. Many observers believe that the St. Gaudens double eagle is the most beautiful U.S. coin as well. The double eagle might have been the most collectable U.S. coin had it not been for its...

A couple of months ago, I think I mentioned that I was keeping my eye out for examples of coins of both Galerius and Galeria Valeria, since I didn't think it would be right to buy one without the other! I recently came across two coins that I liked (from two different sellers) and decided to buy them. The first one arrived last week and the second today, so I thought I'd post about both of them together. I very much like the color on both of them; the first one is a brighter and shinier brown than the photo shows.

Galerius, AE Follis, 305-306 AD, Cyzicus Mint (4th Officina). Obv. Laureate head right, IMP C GAL VAL MAXIMIANVS P F AVG/ Rev. Genius, wearing modius, nude, chlamys draped over left shoulder, standing left, holding cornucopiae in left hand and pouring libation from patera in right hand, GENIO POPV-LI ROMANI; K Δ [K = Cyzicus, Delta = 4th Officina] in exergue. RIC VI Cyzicus 21b & 25a (pp. 582, 584), Sear RCV IV 14546, Cohen 81. 27.8 mm., 9.65 g. 12 h. Ex. Dattari...