"Follow The Leader" coin thread BY THEME (for ALL types of coins, tokens, and medals)

I see a lot of those Musi River finds for sale. My guess is that they are found when the river is dredged. It would be much too difficult to look around on the bottom of what is probably a very dirty and polluted river.

 

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I started collecting coins when I was ten years old. Ever since that momentous beginning, I have been observantly looking into pits, ditches, trenches, potholes, ponds, tombs, excavations, ramps, slants, escarpments, roadsides, shores, banks, edges, coasts, littorals, caves, holes, embankments, earthworks, ramparts, burrows and fresh heaps of sand (still do). Always on the look for jars, urns or rotten bags. Always hoping for the pot of gold at the root of the rainbow, always pining for a hoard, expecting the treasure to stick its small but promising tip out of the ground. I've even sown unusual coins out of the window or in a wood, by way of a libation to propitiate the Coin Finding Gods.

And this I found. The only coin that presented itself to me - from the muddy banks of a lake. It's not the real one, for that is somewhere safe in the house in a forgotten box - forgotten by me in any case. But it looks much like it.
It was at the shore of a lake in southern Czechia near Cesky Krumlov on the river Vltava (Moldau), where me and my family were on holiday, almost fifty years ago:
The Only Coin I Found Myself In The Wild.

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Austria, Two Groschen 1925. 19 mm, 3.3 gr. Possibly bronze, but its color is grey, drab, unpresentable. It was and is worth virtually nothing. The most benevolent way of describing might mention the heavy-booted effort to use an art-deco design. Dirty, sad and cheap, my hoard is. Sorry, Coin Finding Gods.

 

I did fine a "hoard'" once, pretty sure I described it on here before. Before moving out of country, I got rid of almost everything I owned, including my coins. The bag of tokens I dug from the ground in an old basement hole in Maryland back in about 1962 was given to a person I knew who worked at a big coin shop in Seattle. Then a year or two ago, I spotted part of that lot on ebay, including the hand written note I had included in the bag, signed with my name. It was described on the ebay ad as a "hoard", though I had always thought of it as merely a treasure find. It appeared the house above the hole had burned down long ago, from all the ashes in the soil there. Anyhow, my snipe/bid failed and the seller refused to even swap email with a foreign devil like me, and the "JKS Hoard" disappeared back into the darkness. Moral of this story: Never get rid of interesting coins.

 

From a hoard in Romania
AV Stater ND Olbia Mint
King Kotison of Skythia circa 44-42BC
obv: Roman Eagle
rev. Three Lictors
This coin was from a hoard, found in Romania/ kept secret and smuggled out....thank God. Otherwise they would all be in a Bucharest museum. It is surmised that this King was supporting the forces of Brutus in Civil War vs Octavius/ Marcus Antonius. These coins struck to pay his warriors. G His side got wiped out, coins where stashed to keep out of hands of victors.

 

It's a bit of both actually. I've talked to a dozen or so of the treasure hunters from Palembang and while some use a hose to dredge up the bottom of the river to look, some actually dive down holding bricks or stones and look around the river with their hands. I've heard of some using a metal detector underwater, too, but haven't confirmed that.

 

No activity for a while so a change in the theme. How about coins with an odd, nice, ugly or otherwise interesting patina or toning?

China, Northern Song Dynasty, Zhi Ping Yuan Bao - 1 cash, 1064-67AD S523

 

That's got to be one of the most vibrant patinas I've seen before. Does it look close to that in hand? Here's the next one in the Northern Song series.

Northern Song Dynasty of China
1068-1077 CE
Xi Ning Yuan Bao (Seal Script)
AE Cash; 4.29g 25mm
Ref: Hartill 16.174
​

 

1922 East Africa 50 cents - half shilling. The alloy mix is AR .250 and these coins did not age very gracefully in the climate and conditions there.

 

It looks the same in hand. It's incredible. I have a few other Chinese cash with blue patinas, but nothing that comes close to this one.

 

China, Southern Sung Dynasty Cash, S#763 Kuang Tsung 1190-94, Year 5

 

Here's some really attractive toning on an old Indian Mughal coin.

Mughal Empire of India
1556-1605 CE
AE Dam; 20.29g 21mm wide and 6mm thick
Issued under Akbar
Dogaon Mint​

 

Another from China

China Tang Dynasty Su Zong Hartill 14.116

 

1750 Zeeland VOC duit. Must have been in some sea water for all that green.

 

Canada - 50 Cents, 1967

 

1946 Thai 10 satang. Zink or tin coins do not do well in aging.

 

This arrived last week.

Colombia 50 Centavos, 1892

 

This Swedish coin has some amazing toning. It was a lucky eBay buy, the images hardly showed any toning and were quite poor.

Sweden
1799 CE
1/4 Skilling​

 

Snowy day here, so I decided to come online an I’m glad I did. Here is a very lustrous and brilliant coin, and it is quite difficult to capture! Excuse the dirty 2x2 slip.

1896 Austria 2 Heller

 

1736-1801 Sivaganga Rajas. This is a pretty normal look for these old AE coins from India.

 

Qarlughids, Nasir Al-Din Muhammad, 1249-59AD AE Jital