A tiny but huge acquisition - Visigothic Nummus

Thought I was going to spend forever looking for one on sale, and never thought I'd get a great deal on it ($54). This is a personal milestone for me because one of the collecting areas I'm interested in is the coinage of the Germanic tribes, and since I am on a budget I am trying to acquire them as cheaply as possible (have 3 Vandal and one Ostrogothic so far). The Visigoths were the tribe that sacked Rome in 410 AD, then they settled in Hispania and established a kingdom that lasted almost three hundred years, until falling to a Muslim army that invaded from North Africa.
Since they settled in Spain, my ancestral homeland, who knows; I think I possibly might even have Visigothic ancestors!

Obv: Bust facing (kinda looks like a cute little bird imo )
Rev: Cross, S in left field, P in right field, Hispalis mint (minted around mid-7th century AD)





Here's the Visigothic Kingdom around 700 AD:

 

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Great find! That coin looks super. You say tiny: how small is it?

 

Hasn't arrived yet but its a nummus so I'm thinking 8, 9 mm. Will ask the seller this tomorow (or rather, later today; its early am where I'm at).

 

[video=youtube_share;QL2IwNIJaAg]http://youtu.be/QL2IwNIJaAg[/video]

 

Great coin :thumb:

and a great but heart-braking film :thumb:

 

Great Find!


Cool Owl King!

 

That is an interesting coin, but it's not very aesthetically pleasing to my eye. I think it's important to note how much coin making had degraded by this period in history from the classical nature of Greek and Roman coins a few centuries prior. Compare the bust of this coin to the Greek and Roman portraits:



You can see the same degradation in later Roman coins.

 

Neat coin, a type I dont have or know anything about really. I see them for sale at times though.

 

I love the coins from this era and have been thinking about branching into these as I have taken to buying crusader and early german state coins like this one from Brandenburg (later than these of course).



http://www.cachecoins.org/ottovbrandenburg.htm

But I am fascinated with early visogothic Spain and have read extensively on that turbulent time period and I love the rough coinage of these early kingdoms.

Thanks for showing it. What these coins lack in aesthetics they make up for in very very interesting transitional period history. After reading about the Franks, Vandals and Visigoths I realized that all europeans probably have german in us as it would be their kingdoms that would form the new countries (like France - Franks).

 

Guten Tag mine neuer freunde!

 

Lassen Sie die Geldbörse und weg langsam.

 

It doesn't appear that Visigothic coins are common at all, from what searching I've done so far, so congratulations again!

 

That's one small step for coins.....one giant leap for coinkind.

 

Like you said, the coinage quality had degraded and with European coins of this period, if you want to collect them, you have to set your standards lower if you are used to better aesthetics. For those who mainly collect high-quality ancients, you will probably want to stay away from this time period. I know these coins aren't the best looking but I love the history behind the late Roman and Germanic coins and that helps fuel my interest in them.

Not at all. Neither are coins of their brothers, the Ostrogoths. Vandal though is somewhat easier to find. This one was the first Visigothic coin for sale I've seen since I started looking for Germanic, approximately a year ago.

 

Thanks all

 

A 9mm coin is an itsy-bitsy bit of a thing. I've got a few myself. When you blow it up to fill a computer screen, it can look rather crude. Hold it even a foot away, and you can see why the engravers chose large, easily recognizable devices...

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:smile Nice pick up you ole Goth.

 

Nice history behind the coin.

 

lol thanks ripley

Same thing with late Roman (and early Byzantine) monograms. Most of the bronze coinage had gotten so small that many times the obverse legend wouldn't fit. They then decided to put on the reverses monograms that contained letters of the ruler's name, so even if the obverse letters were gone, people would still know who issued that coin. Leo I got smart and even put a lion on many of his nummi, since Leo is lion in Latin.

 

Ok so the seller contacted back about the size. It's a little bigger than I thought: 13 mm wide! Still small, but not a total runt (not that I would have liked it any less if it was, of course)