Ancients => a knob trying to make sense of the confusing Greek denominations

=> Roger that!!

 

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I think he meant "boob". Only jokes little brother. Only jokes.

 

I'm fairly self-degrading => I don't need any extra help, Bing

 

anyway ... that wasn't supposed to be the part that made me seem simple ...

=> the stupid questions about to be asked will be the dead give-away!!

a) if my examples don't seem to jive with the proposed weight categories, do I assume that the seller may have made a mistake and therefore merely alter my coin's description depending upon the closest weight category? (NOTE => Doug may have already touched-on this ... the weight categories may have changed slightly throughout time, so perhaps I should merely look for similar examples on-line and determine which denomination is most widely used?)

b) also, what is an acceptable variation in weight from the standard? Yah, I realize that chips and wear can reduce the coin's weight, but is there a rule of thumb for acceptable weight discrepancy?

... there, I'll start with those two questions ...

Thanks for gazing at my wares and helping me out with a few nagging questions

Cheers

 

There is no blanket answer to any of these questions. Every coin has to be examined in its economic context.

For instance, the Tyrian Shekel was a highly respected coin in the Levant between 126 BC and 56 AD, owing to its high fineness (0.940 or higher). It weighed in at four Athenian drachmas, or about 14 grams.

The earliest Nabataean half and quarter-shekels of Malichus I and Obodas II followed this standard closely, so in the discrete context of that period, it's easy to calculate three denominations: Shekel=14g, 1/2 Shekel=7g, 1/4 Shekel=3.5g.

But as happens in every economic system, inflation encouraged the degradation of Nabataean silver, both in weight and fineness. Over time, the Nabataean 1/4 Shekel dropped in fineness to around 0.80, comparable to the Roman denarius, which made for easy international trade. But the decrease in fineness didn't stop there. It continued to drop throughout the history of the kingdom, never regaining its earlier standard. (Exactly the same thing occurred in the history of Roman silver when the fineness of the denarius began to slide with Nero's issues, until the invention of the antoninianus, which also began to slide downward after some time.)

There seem to be inevitable forces that degrade the fineness of silver in any economic system, over time. Why that doesn't happen to gold is a mystery to me. When the bullion value of gold exceeds its fiat value, it merely disappears from production, rather than getting watered down.

Anyway, I've digressed. But my point is that economic systems are never static - they are always in a state of flux. And any nuanced conversation about denominations is necessarily tied to very specific periods and circumstances. As I said, there is no blanket answer.

 

You have ancients in your collection too, Green. Don't pretend you're not one of us.

 

Need of an expanding monetary supply?

 

Of course - silver and copper are far more available than gold. But I think there's something sacrosanct about gold in the human psyche. For all the times silver gets debased, you never see it happening with gold. The only electrum coins I know of are the earliest Lydians. For some reason, you just don't mess with gold. I could be wrong of course - you've looked at a few more coins than I have!

 

While its fun to learn about the history of money and to find out which coins are what denominations. Sometimes its best to sit back and look at the pretty coins.

 

Steve, consider this a "like" for all of the coins in this thread. However, my slow ISP couldn't handle loading all those images so I waited for page 2 to comment

 

While gold was 'sacrosanct' in the Roman world, the Byzantines got over it and used electrum as did the Celts and some eastern groups. I'm thinking especially about the Kiderites who have a particularly debased gold coin common in the market at the moment (hoard?). Gold has an interesting characteristic of lending a smoothness to alloys even when the percentage is low.
http://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=693761

Part of me has wanted one of these but I always talk myself out of them. There are dealers selling them as showing a stylized figure while others swear the type is a knife. I'd probably be more likely to own one if I were really convinced which side was up.