I never posted a fossil of my own for this thread, so here we go. SPECIES: Tiger Iron Stromatolite AGE: Archean (~2.7 Billion Years) LOCATION: Pilbara, Western Australia SIZE: 4.2"x 3.9", .4" Thick And this one is a good candidate for my oldest coin, though it's hard to tell as I have 2 or 3 other coins that were minted around the same time period. Ionia, Kolophon AR Tetartemorion. Late 6th Century BCE. Obverse: Laureate head of Apollo facing. Reverse: TE monogram within incuse square. References: SNG Cop 133; SNG Kayhan 356. Size: 7mm, 0.25g.
Fascinating stuff! I don't have any real artifacts; haven't found anything that speaks to me like coins do. My oldest man-made, non-coin possessions would probably be: 1) A late 19th century unidentified handgun bullet (made of lead but rifled, so post-Civil War) 2) A late 19th or early 20th century Catholic necklace housing a bone shard of Francis of Assisi (from my Catholic confirmation under that saint... a *long* time ago) 3) My grandfather's "treasure box"; a wooden jewelry box made by my great grandfather for my great grandmother in the mid 1920s. As a kid I had a collection of rocks and fossils, mostly given to me by my grandparents' elderly neighbor who was a collector, but his kids didn't want them when he moved into the nursing home. Some of them are identified, but I have no pictures and no clue which is the oldest. I know I had some Carboniferous-era ferns, and some of those really common Ordovician nautiloids. As for coins, Lydian Kingdom Croesus 560-546 BC AR Siglos Others that could be older, but not with certainty: Electrum 1/48 stater, either a pre- or proto-coin, or simply an unstuck planchet of a later coin. India, Gandhara Janapada AR Shatamana 600-300 BC (But probably 450-400 BC)