My Oldest Coin

This little electrum one-sixth stater comes from Miletos, about 550 BC. It comes from the event horizon of the invention of coinage.

We don't know why coins were invented: it was a singular event in the history of money. (For instance, Sumerians already had futures contracts for thousands of years. silver jewelry was traded by weight; etc.) Aristotle said that money was invented as a medium of trade. About 1860, Ernst Curtius suggested that coins were invented at temples, which amassed offerings and used coins as a reward. Forty years later, the earliest known coins were discovered at the temple of Artemis at Ephesos. About 1920, Philip N. Ure suggested that coins were invented as part of the upheavals that brought tyrants to power. (Tyrants being self-made, not hereditary, rulers. "Tyrants" as "evil" rulers is a later spin or slant.) A few years later, Seltman wrote the Encyclopedia Britannica article on "Money" and said that coins were invented specifically by merchants. About 1955, the tyrant theory was re-explored and refined by Robert Cook, Philip Grierson, Martin Price, and Colin Kraay. Today, we believe that coins were invented specifically as bonus payments to mercenaries. In the next generation, the Lydians created standardized coins, but that came later.

We believe that coins were invented in Lydia. (Archaic Greek poets allude to coins from Lydia. Archilochus the poet-soldier said, "I care not for the kremata of Gyges.") However, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesos revealed 96 coins in three finds and these types are assigned to Ionian cities, or perhaps to wealthy individuals in those cities. Miletos has always been a strong alternative suggestion for the earliest coins. In any case, I bought this coin because I was building a collection based on the lives of philosophers and Miletos was the home of Thales. Two generations later, Aspasia of Miletos was the girlfried of Perikles of Athens, and hosted symposia where Socrates and others learned the Milesian way of philosophy.

Here is the coin. The other link is a larger Miletos coin from the ANS that shows the same type: a recumbant lion and incuse punches.

 

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Another great post, Micheal.
Very interesting and informative.
I appreciate you taking the time to share with us.

My oldest, though not technicaly a coin, is a 1794 Conder token.

 

I have only heard that coins were invented for purposes of easing trade, myself. I find the alternative explinations that you offered to be very interesting. Now that you have mentioned it, I find myself (for the first time) wondering if a coin system of trade was invented for a completely unassociated purpose than its true importance in social impact and practice.
From a standpoint of economics, one can understand the importance of the impact that coins have had on our social development. It delivered us from the barter system, in which every trade conducted in day to day life was a singular event horizon of itself, in which you possessed X and needed Y. Your objective became finding somone else that had Y and needed X - a rare occurance, to be certain. With the development of a coin system, it became much easier to find a person who needed X, and find another person who had Y, where the medium between the two was an agreed upon system of value.
I believe Adam Smith touched on this, at some point, in the Wealth of Nations. I will have to refer back and see if he has anything to add.

 

Good post, except your "we" doesn't conform to any known "we" when it comes to the purpose of the first coinage. It's not true that "Today, we believe that coins were invented specifically as bonus payments to mercenaries." Payment to mercenaries is just one of many possible reasons for the marking of uniform electrum dumps with types by a ruling authority, signifying the first "coin."

Among the other possible reasons that numismatists in the literature have proposed are religious offerings, gifts as part of treaty ceremonies, wedding presents, hospitality offerings, and tax payments, emphasis on "proposed." This is all educated speculation. There's no contemporaneous documentation regarding the reason coins came into existence, and the archeological evidence is inconclusive as well. As such there's no consensus, no "we," regarding this issue anyway. You would have been on more accurate ground if you had stuck to your first statement: "We don't know why coins were invented."

What we do know is that coins were *not* invented for trade or commerce. That's a widespread misconception, the lifting of a later benefit of coinage and placing it on the first coinage, a misconception that Plato and Aristotle (writing about two centuries after the fact) were guilty of, among others. The earliest coins have been conspicuously absent from archeological finds in the marketplaces of their time (bullion pieces have been found there -- bullion was still being used for commerce during the time the earliest coins came into being). And the earliest coins haven't been found in hoards outside where they were minted, indicating they weren't being used for trade (bullion was still being used here as well).

There's more support for a "we" regarding Lydia as being the source of the first coinage, but here too there's far from universal agreement.

Ephesos, as are the other Greek coastal cities of Asia Minor, is an interesting place, and these are interesting coins.

 

Consider that the "computer" was invented to create tables for artillery. No one foresaw the WWW. At that same time the telephone was a failure at its most subtle application: when invented, the telephone was supposed to let people dial symphony concerts and other wonderful things. So, the point is that some inventions have applications other than their immediate intentions. Coins were like that.

Coins created a new social context. You could hold the value of a cow in your hand and never have to feed it. New forms of wealth developed. There is much more to the story, and all of that is why I like this little coin.

 

and don't forget that Santa was giving out lumps of coal and that's not a bad thing coming from the North Pole. At least that is what my dad told me.

 

Ancient Chinese history is an enigma, at least to me. So many records were purposely destroyed, both in imperial times, and of course under the communists. Records that were not destroyed remain inaccessible. You would have to read Chinese excellently and do it for many styles and dialects to unravel the mystery.

Ancient China may have had sophisticated forms of money long before the Greeks.

As for whether or not these squares of gold are "coins" that depends on the definition of "coin" and I do not know one that is watertight. It may be that we need to totally redefine all of our terms. The idea that coins (by definition) are stamped with a mark to signify their weight or purity or value or whatever is malarky. There are so many counter-examples that you cannot call them exceptions.

Coin, banknote, chit, scrip, token, promissory note, bond, receipt, ... we all sort of accept a broadly undefined range of specifics that we loosely integrate into concepts. The concepts, however, are not rigorous. I am not sure that they ever can be. It might be interesting to try.

 

I agree with you Mike and Rick. The concept of the coin or money comes from having a system of commerce that has the use of a "concrete object" where, (as Mike stated before), you can have the value of a cow without owning the cow. As for the cow's value that like the currency being used will go up and down. Now if a culture finds value in a concrete object that no one else does then it will have a hard time with trade. That is why I think gold and to some extent silver coins came into play. Easy to travel with, compared to a cow, and accepted everywhere in the old world. GD's squares of gold, I think, was also an example of this system of commerce. Now the question is can a coin be a coin without an imprint. I think yes, if it was created for the purpose of trade and was recognized to be of a certain weight and therefore of a certain value and could be carried in hand and can be seen to differ from a gold bar.

 

This obviously is how money evolved, but it's not necessarily how coins evolved. It's important to distinguish between the two. All coins are money, but not all money is in the form of coinage. Money was used far earlier than coinage, and much besides coins are still used for money today.

The importance of the imprint or type on a coin is that it was what guaranteed the bullion has having a definite exchange value. Could private individuals in archaic times make that guarantee? Yes. So requiring a "coin" to have the type or mark of a ruling authority, rather than an individual, is somewhat arbitrary but is important nonetheless. Bring it forward to today. If Joe Blow stamps pieces of silver in his workshop as being worth more than their intrinsic value, does this make them "coins"? Most would say no. But the U.S. government, and other governments, do this and have always done this, in the post- as well as pre-clad age.

 

"The importance of the imprint or type on a coin is that it was what guaranteed the bullion has having a definite exchange value" Reid in response to my thinking that GD's gold, whats new, chinese squares with a hole can be considered as coins and not just currency.

Hi Reid I agree with you that the standard defintion of a coin is the three criteria rule being; First, it must bear the mark of the issuing authority. Lacking this, the item is a form of primitive money, not a coin. Secondly, it must contain an intrinsic value bearing some relationship to the circulating value. The intrinsic value can be less than the circulating value but if it falls too far below, the item becomes a token rather than a coin. The third criterion is that the coin must be issued to a denomination and weight standard, otherwise it is bullion which must be weighed at each transaction.

However, what I was thinking in the case of GD's gold is what if the hole in the sqare of gold was the mark of the issuing authority,, which would be that Chinese dynasty, and if the squares of gold came in different sizes wouldn't that suggest that they would fit the criteria of the other two especially if there was an edict stating that gold could not be mined or melted from ore unless under the ruling authority's direction. Of course I am not a scholar and Asia, outside of near asia or as we say today the middle east, was never really an area that I had put any effort into so maybe I'm way off but then again I like to think outside of the circle and in this case think inside of the square.

 

I like your turn of phrase "thinking inside the square." <g> I know relatively little about early Chinese coins, just that ... well, I'm now reluctant to say anything in disagreement with what you said or what anybody else says out of concern that the moderator here may cut off this conversation too. So let me just agree with you -- I do agree with most of what you said -- and leave it at that.

Do you have any of these early Chinese coins in your collection? They're not very aesthetic, compared with Greek coins, to my eyes anyway. I hope I'm not being too disagreeable by saying that. I suspect they're more popular as collectibles in China than in the West, but I suppose some Americans and Europeans collect or even specialize in them, and no doubt quite enthusiastically. Some dealers stock them, it seems, from a quick Web search just now.

 

I have devoted a lot of thought and research to this problem of defining "coin" (as well as the other terms we use such as "token" and "banknote" and "scrip"). I do not have any immutable answers. I do know that dictionary style one-liners will not work. About three years ago, I posted this definition to rec.collecting.coins:
>>
I define COIN as "a durable and conveniently transported physical form of money,usually metal and usually a disk, though occasionally of other materials andshapes." From there, I expand to explain the history and uses of "coins." There is no other convenient way to do this defining. It is an orwellian fallacy to attempt to define "coin" by a simple one sentence integration and differentiation.
<<

Why? Why does a coin have to have a mark? Its shape and size and other details of its physical state speak volumes.

What is an "authority"?

I agree that coins do have marks of identification. Identification of the issuer has been an important aspect of coinage from the beginning. That, however, is only tradition and is not required by the nature of the object.

British gold coins have no statement of value on them. In the 1600s, it was the case in Great Britain that silver coins were accepted by count ("tale") and not by weight, even though many were clipped. At the same time gold coins were (legally) weighed, even though they hardly circulated at all, being for large transactions. By custom, you could pass a gold coin or three or ten, but for truly large transactions, the coins were weighed, not counted.

If coins are minted to "some standard" but that standard is not known or announced, then it is as if the coin is minted to no standard. Mexican coins stated their weight and fineness at a time when US coins did not. In the 1790s and 1800s, American silver coins passed by weight in world trade. There are many such counter-examples that defeat almost any definition I have seen.

Now, you introduce a new term, "primitive money." Do you have a definition for it?

Historically, the so-called "intrinsic" value was the circulating value. What you refer to is "money of account" or "denomination." The Tons of US silver coins left for the Caribbean specifically because the stated vale was less than the "intrinsic" value. Some authors in numismatics wring their hands of that, but I do not. The coins could not have left America except for the fact that Americans received greater value in the things those coins bought. Several times in US history, a dollar contained more than a dollar's worth of silver. They were still "coins" by definition.

My point here is to that any definition of "coin" -- and your views were fine, really -- has some problems with it as long as we try to define narrowly as the dictionary does.

 

"Do you have any of these early Chinese coins in your collection?"
Actually Reid the answer is no. I am not even sure if I ever seen any coin from China.

Hey guys I am far from an expert in this type of conversation and engaged in it for the sake of enjoyment and to work out some ideas I had with people that appear to be experts. I think we all think that the ability to freely converse with those who disagree is where information is challanged to see if it is knowledge.
So in other words, thanks Mike and thanks Reid for your thoughts and it is good to see a scholarly conversation on Ancient coins and I hope these type of conversations continue with more joining in an appropriate way.

 

Don't give up the ship! I certainly hope that you are among the continuing participants. Anyone can think this through. I have thought out the negatives. I can see the problems. I have no special insights to the answers. Sometimes it comes to you in morning after you sleep on it.

We think that if we can understand the first coin, then we understand "coins" or "coinness." I am not even sure that this is fruitful.

I said above that your definition was OK. It just had a few large holes in it. The same kinds of problems come from every coin dictionary or glossary I have seen and I once worked with a coin library of about 10,000 books. The ANA recently formed a committee to define coins. (They did other things, but that was one of their assignments.) Your views, questions, opinions, readings, observations, and mystical insights are as important as anyone else's, surely!

 

Getting back to the thread's theme, my oldest coin is the 20 french gold franc of Napoleon as Premier Consul. I would like to get the 1802 coin for this collection as well. After that and a few other 20 francs then I might move up to the 40 franc or just go for another country another time.

 

Napoleon is an interesting person in an interesting time. I am probably more inline with other sentiments. The story that Beethoven ripped up the first page of Heroica and renamed the Third Symphony Eroica when Napoleon declared himself Emperor is probably not true, but I like it anyway. (According to my father, his mother's side of the family came to Sicily from Corsica. Having fought alongside Napleon, they took the name "Chevalier" which they changed to "Cavilieri." At least, that's his story and he stuck to it. )

Even though I am no longer an active collector and actually unburdened myself of my accumulations, I still have a few of this and that and among them, I find that more than a few are really, really old. My interest was primarily in ancient Greek coins from the towns associated with philosophers, so that is not so surprising. For instance, this one is from Syracuse. Even though it was struck about 460 BC, it might have circulated in the time of Plato or Archimedes.

 

Mikeretty cool to have a linkage to Napoleon. Especially if it was the first time around when the grand army was truly something. Shame Napoleon came back a second time. I guess the phase of you can't go home again wasn't around then.

Sometimes less can be more and to have a coin that might have graced the palms of the ancient greats resting in your hand is a collection in itself.

I also find it particularly interesting when collectors are obtaining coins or bills,.ie confederate, that their forefathers might have carried or the very least recognized. It is like a bridge to their ancestors.

 

You've started a very good thread here Mike.

I suppose that the oldest 'coin' that I have (if you can call it a 'coin' - many people do), is an Indian [India] punchmark coin. I don't think that they are certain yet as to what came first, the chinese coin that you spoke of, or the Indian punchmark coins. The next oldest coin that I have would have to be the Lydian coin circa 650 BC. Regards, John

 

My oldest coin is probably from the Miletian colony of Olbia which was at the mouth of the Borysthenes(now Dnepr) River in Ukraine. It is dolphin shaped and conjectured to have been made from 600-550 BCE. Aside from that I have coins from Syracuse Sicily that are from 395-350 BCE.

I would like to find a nice Miletos coin, esp. 1/48 Stater with the bird like object on it, but so far they are usually in poor shape.