What qualifies as an Ancient Coin here?

I tend to agree with ycon as far as defining what I collect. I avoid coins made with machines; I like hand struck coins that vary greatly from the ones struck before and after them on the same day in the same shop. Machine duplicated coins are modern in my mind.

I do not like the entire concept of pigeonholing history into periods and believe that teachers who still teach things like 476 AD need to retire. The main problem is that ancient 'spirit' coinage lasted longer in some places than others. I consider the thin silver coins with more emphasis on legends made with punches to be medieval even if they are older than other coins made more in the old style somewhere else.

For years it seemed odd that ancient collectors would include all Byzantine coins in their collection but would not touch issues of other states that interfaced with the Byzantines. That makes no more sense to me today but I am used to it now and no longer worry about labels.

 

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I like to read posts in this forum about any coins not made by machine (as Doug suggests), including hand cast coins.

I am not very worried about how ancient coins are defined by anyone.

John

 

The Byzantine Empire spanned two major historical eras, Late Classical Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Early Byzantine coins can easily be classified as 'ancient', late Byzantine not so much.

Most ancient coin collectors say 'sod it' and classify all Byzantine coinage as 'ancient'.

 

In my opinion, the Carolingian period (around 800) for example is not "ancient" but medieval. But when it comes to coins, the lines should be drawn a little differently. As others have written here, the question whether a coin is "hand made", as opposed to produced by a machine, is an important differentiation.

So I think that the Ancient Coins board covers ancient and medieval pieces, while World Coins is about later (non-US) coins. We're not that strict here. From time to time somebody will write about an old coin in "World Coins" or "Coin Chat", and if we see that (and/or it gets reported), we may move it to this board ...

Christian

 

Right. In fact, we used to have one big board that covered both world and ancient coins - including medieval ones of course. Then, due to traffic (more "ancients folks" around), the decision was made to have these two separate ones.

There are coin forum sites that have different sub-forums for almost every aspect of collecting: by country, then by period for each country, maybe extra sub-forums for a variety of "theme" collections, for legal aspects, and so on. That may be helpful for new visitors, but not necessarily for those who post. Of course the "one big bag" approach is not great either so Coin Talk has a position in between the two extremes. Works well, I think, and may of course be adapted in the future, depending on what our members write about ...

Christian

 

I personally use the cut off date 498 A.D. with the reform Ae coins of Anastasius. Yes it is completely arbitrary and it is only good if you collect Roman coins.

 

"Medieval" is a concept invented by Europeans in the 1800's to describe changes in European culture. It has no relevance to other cultures. As has been noted, some other cultures were experiencing golden ages during this period. Also, the beginning and ending dates are somewhat arbitrary, even for Rome. At what point did the total number of Germanic invaders qualify to be called a change in epoch? It was accomplished over a period of centuries and was greater in some areas than in others. Likewise, it can be argued the Renaissance began in Northern Italy almost four centuries before it reached Russia, making 17th century Russian coins more like "ancient" and 14th century Italian coins clearly Medieval.

For me the difference in coins is more the style and sophistication of the coins themselves. While anything before, say A.D. 500, seems like ancient, (speaking mainly of European coins), the date is really fuzzy and some later coins are ancient, some earlier ones more crude like Medieval. Not much produced later than that approaches the style of "ancient" Greek and Roman coins. I know Byzantine coins are usually classed as ancients (that's where I put my few Byzantine coins for lack of a better place), but to me they are mostly more like Medieval in their crude figures and iconography.

For other cultures, little of this applies. The coins of Wang Mang of China (AD 9-23) look very like the Qing Dynasty coins of 1911. Some coins of the states of India look more like Medieval into the 19th Century.

Machine-made coins, even if crude, are clearly modern for the purposes of this division.

 

Once I tried to decide when I thought my definition of collectible coins ended taking into consideration my aversion of machine made coins. My oldest machine coin is a sixpence of Elizabeth I made during the short experiment with milled coinage. After that time, the mint returned to old style hammered issues so I was able to ignore the 'problem' of that one coin.
1567 milled 6d


I thought those crude wire silvers of Russia must qualify but was really turned off when I discovered that the dies were produced by hubbing which is way too mechanical for me.
Peter I - Russia - 1699 AR kopeck


Then I decided that the whole idea of categories was faulty save the one that means everything: Collect what you like and like what you collect. Just because it is Roman does not mean I need it. Just because it is modern does not mean I can't have one.

This is one of very few US coin I ever actually paid over face value to obtain since about 1970. I gave up waiting to find a half dime in change.

 

How did you find out about that? I didn’t realize that they used die hubbing that early.

 

You will find way too many die links in wire coins but I forget where I read that. Sorry.

 

It’s fine!

 

Any date which would be proposed will be in one way or another arbitrary. I myself used the date of 498 A.D. which is the date of the introduction of the new aes coinage of Anastasius. However this only works for collectors of Roman Coins. In theory almost any date after the coin reform of Diocletian could be proposed but again only for the Romans. The Sassanid coinage continues more or less intact until the Arab conquest. Though I did collect Parthian coins I avoided the Sassanid for that very reason.

 

Yes, that is one of the reasons for my original posting. Being a calligrapher, I am very much interested in the style of legend lettering - the letterforms - employed in coin production during various historical periods. I frequently purchase coins because of the clarity and completeness of the legends rather than quality of the portrait and reverse depictions: