You finally made me do it!

As I said before, we medievalists hate the term.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

You had an interesting observation on the "Dark Ages" I have not heard before. You could be accurate, but what about the Renaissance? Where does that fit into your description?

 

I would like to thank everyone that took the time to respond to my thread. It has been interesting and it's been a learning experience. A lot of good information has been provided and that will be documented with this coin. I love the examples and other coins that were posted too. From the comments, I may have overpaid slightly as I paid $105.00. Even so, it was worth it. I liked the coin and I bought something I had no knowledge of so it was worth the price. It has been professionally graded so I was comfortable in making the purchase. The main thing is, it's not a fake, it's the real thing and it's silver. I love silver. It's shiny. lol Again, thank you for you comments. I'm not sure what my next Ancient will be but I will buy another.

I have to ask and I may be sorry that I did but why do so many of you fellow collectors refer to this as The Dark Side?

 

Personally, if I were to suggest your next ancient coin purchase, I would suggest a Tetradrachm from 4th-2nd century B.C. because many of them have beautiful art work on them, and many are surprisingly affordable, even in XF condition.

 

I'm not sure I follow Daniel. People often use 'the dark ages' to mean the time period roughly from 500-1000. It's a time period which lacks primary source evidence (that which is written in the time period) primarily because of the disintegration of the Western part of the Roman Empire, and the reduction of literacy which accompanied it. With few sources, some have termed it "dark" (there's a "dark ages" for Ancient Greece too, with the fall of the Macenaeans and before the Polis becomes fully formed).

Since this is 500-1000, I, not sure how the Renaissance fits in

 

My apologies, I thought you said 500-1500. Yes, I just checked your post. You did say 500-1500. I suppose you just had a typo.

 

500-1500 for Middle Ages/medieval. 500-1000 for early Middle Ages (which some call 'dark ages')

 

Sorry for the short response earlier - I had a short break in class. Historians (not necessarily numismatists) tend to split the Middle Ages up into three periods - Early (the so-called 'dark ages') from 500-1000, High Middle Ages 1000-1300, Later Middle Ages (sometimes lumped in with Renaissance) 1300-1500 (or 1600 if you include Renaissance).

Ultimately, all of the periodization is pointless, as a previous poster stated, because people didn't wake up one day and say "okay, time to be medieval!" It's just a useful tool for us historians to break up chunks of time.

 

Yeah, and numismatically you can differentiate ages in different parts too. For example, Charlemagne and his monetary reform, or the introduction of the Gross Tournois.

 

mmmm, Charlemagne ... I still haven't scored one of those pricey lil' sweeties!!

 

I may be wrong but I think it's because these coins are not as widely collected as U.S. and when you go the coin store you don't see many books or coins. Think my last LCS had a couple red boxes full of ancients and a few expensive ones out of the red boxes.

And dark side sounds cool and then you can use cool Star Wars pictures like this:

 

yup, you nailed it!!

 

We refer to ourselves as the Dark Side because we are so much different from Modern collectors. We buy coins not necessarily for their value on the market, but for the history. And we handle our coins like one might handle pocket change. Bottom line is that we are just different, the opposite of other collectors, so why not yin and yang. The force has two sides. We wear the badge of the dark side with honor.

 

I hate to tell you all this but I can't pronounce the names. It's a good thing we do this in writing because you'd either faint or strangle me for me pronunciations.

 

That's a first, Darth Vader waving, or is that a 3rd Reich salute?

 

Have you read this?
http://www.forumancientcoins.com/numiswiki/view.asp?key=Ancient Coin Collecting 101

I can't remember if it's in the article or not but somewhere on FORVM's NumisWiki I found an article on pronunciation.

 

I don't know what that Storm trooper is baking, but do we really want to eat it? LOL!

 

I must admit, some of you ancient collectors know far more about ancient, Medieval, and Sassanian history, so I dare not get into an argument with any of you. Ha, ha!

 

It's all good Daniel! What is your focus anyway? Have YOU joined the Dark Side yet?

 

Last summer I went to my first coin show (not counting coin shows when I was a child). All of my ancient numismatic camaraderie had been solely online... I had no idea how to pronounce anything (Ag-uh-thō-kuls is not correct ). I scrambled to learn proper voicing of many Greek and Roman names and places so as to not embarrass myself at the ANA World's Fair of Money.

The most shocking of all was learning the correct pronunciation of drachm. It's "dram"!

Turns out that there are as many pronunciation variations as there are collectors and dealers . You can find various pronunciation guides online but they too are inconsistent. While I felt more confident having a clue about how to say various names, no one would have laughed if I'd completely butchered the words. Or, at least not to my face .