The World's First Nickel

I've been patiently waiting to find one of these for quite some time. Its one of the first nickel coins ever struck, made in the Hellenistic kingdom of Baktria in the 2nd century BC. Some numismatists believed that the nickel in these coins was recovered from meteors. (I'm not convinced, but its a neat story) After these issues were made in Baktria, no nickel coins were struck again until the 19th century.



Euthydemos II
Kingdom of Bactria
NI double unit – 7.37 g., 22mm
185-180 BC
Laureate head of Apollo right
Tripod, monogram to inner left
BAΣIΛEΩΣ EYΘYΔHMOY
Bopearachchi Série 6B; SNG ANS 224

 

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Awesome coin, with an interesting background!


stainless

 

Wow that is really neat! Congrats on the pickup!:thumb:

 

Neat coin and cool story. I belive the metal is recovered from meteors.

 

From Wikipedia...

Interesting thread! Do you think they knew this was nickel or do you think they were fooled into thinking it was silver?

 

It circulated as a low-denomination double unit (we don't know the actual name). I believe I read, on Doug Smith's page if I recall, that these were made in an alloy of 25% nickel 75% copper, same as modern nickels.

 

great coin

 

thats cool. congrats on finding it!

 

Wow...interesting! Thanks!

 

Mine is not as old (171-160 BC) but will serve as an example of the other nickel type (Panther) available. This is Agathokles but matching coins exist with the name of his brother Pantaleon. I have no idea where these stood in value compared to the silver coins but the workmanship suggests that the silver was higher and bronzes lower. They are not particularly rare but most seen have terrible surfaces and low price guarantees an ugly coin.

 

Arda...Thanks for the info. As they said at the end of the movie "Maltesse Falcon" "This is the stuff dreams are made of" Traci

 

Cool.

 

It's the first time I hear of ancient coins made of Nickel. Why not ?
Interesting info.
Thanks for sharing

Q

 

I had never heard of it being used for coinage prior to about the mid 19th century - due to difficulties in isolating it from other elements.

I do have to wonder if it was intentional, or rather in the case of China above, where it was believed to be white copper?

 

Nickel is commonly found in meteorites and places where meteorites have hit earth long ago so its not at all odd to think it was taken from a meteorite. It is thought that a large percentage of the nickel found on earth got here that way.

 

alloy

This reference mentions some of the possibilities but I'm not willing to accept things written just because they are from a lofty source.
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1953Metic...1...60B

The article discounts the likelihood of meteoric origin a position which I now accept but it goes on and says that the Baktrians may have supposed the material to be silver because they made similar coins from silver. That statement makes me question any assertion by the author. Show me a silver coin of either type. Show me a Baktrian silver type struck in nickel alloy.

Applying the same nonscientific method to the question, I tend to believe that the Baktrians would not have valued nickel so lowly or alloyed the material with terrestrial copper if it were important to them that the metal was from the heavens. There is no significant copper in meteorites.

For our purposes as collectors it makes no difference where the Baktrians got the metal. It was an experiment that failed to convince them to continue rather like the first milled silver under Elizabeth I was not the immediate end of hammered coins. Today, we are living in a time where many people have trouble telling silver from nickel or just don't care. Projecting that view on the Baktrians does not strike me as wise.

 

So they have roughly 20% nickel? A large percentage of Nickel on earth is thought to be from Meteors...even if they didnt find a meteor and use the nickel in it to strike coins, there is a very big possibility that any nickel that is used in anything might come from this source...I dont see how they could discount it.

 

New information for me. Thanks for sharing. It appears to be a very well defined coin given the age and the toughness of the metal.

 

In the fifties when that article was written, some scientists were still unconvinced that Meteor Crater in Arizona was a meteor crater. Today we are seeing thousands of healed craters all over the world. I see a different question here if the Baktrians refined nickel that happened to be there from a meteoric event long before or whether they picked up known objects from the sky for use in coins. I believe current scholarship is moving toward meteoric attribution of more and more minority elements on the earth's surface. I'm no geologist.

 

Doug - do you have any more up to date articles on this? SO much new information has been uncovered on Baktrian coins that I would doubt validity of anything before the 1980's regardless of the author.