I was fascinated by a comment Doug made earlier to-day in a thread in World & Ancient Coins (the emphasis is mine): His claim for the primacy of the ducat is well-founded ... but it is a matter about which reasonable people may differ. And I think I disagree with him. What do you think? My choice would be the silver dollar. It has its roots in the Guldengroschen of 1486 and the Joachimsthaler of 1518. It had two immediate advantages, one monetary and the other political. The monetary advantage was that, unlike gold trade coins such as the florin and the ducat, it could be regularly used as currency—it was the Renaissance equivalent of the $50 dollar bill. The political advantage was that its large silver surface gave space for the engraver to proclaim the importance of his city, country or empire. (The Renaissance equivalent of the LP cover?) As the taler, crown, peso or dollar it was used in the Old World and the New for nearly 500 years. It is not just minted to-day, it is still valid currency in several countries. Other candidates would be the Athenian silver Tetradrachm, or Owl, the Roman gold Aureus or silver Denarius, the Byzantine Solidus, the Florin, the Ducat (of course), the Doubloon, the Napoleon, and the Sovereign (also of course :). Such a collection would be an enormous task, and would probably take several decades—a length of time during which most people’s collecting focus changes. I doubt whether he really quit collecting: he changed to collecting numismatic books. Later, John
It depends ... What do you mean by "important"? The shekel of Tyre was one of the 30 Pieces of Silver that sold Jesus. Hard to find anything more consequentiial than that. Any of the first coins, anything from the Foundation of the Artemesion at Ephesus or anything from the same time, would be the most important, as all others derived from that. Coinage only goes back 650 BCE, but money as we know it today goes back to 5000 BCE. So, in the invention of coinage was a singular event in the history of commerce. I cannot even think of a third to compete with those and 1 is way ahead of 2.
Oh I dunno, I managed to put together roughly 1/4 of a date set in about 3 years. Had I had the funds, I could have completed it in that time as I had all the tough dates. Just as point of interest John, the Netherlands ducat, and the majority of its imitators, did circulate as regular money as well as trade coins. That is the question now isn't it. And rather obviously that answer defines the other answer.
That’s a good point, Mike. I was thinking of importance in a numismatic sense: a coin which significantly advances international trade and is used in many countries. So I missed the 30 pieces of silver completely. Mea culpa. I did consider the very first coins—such as the electrum coins of Asia Minor and the early Chinese cash—but excluded them on the grounds that metallurgy was advancing everywhere in that fertile 6th century, and coins emerged independently in several places. The advent of the consistent dependable Athenian Owl, however, enabled international trade (and international counterfeiting) to take off in the Eastern Mediterranean. <digression on> Sticking with a scriptural theme, I observe that the standard 1000 troy ounce bar of fine silver—available from any bullion merchant—weighs about 68 pounds avoirdupois ... and therefore about the same as a talent (or 60 minas) of silver. I have heard that some silverbugs bury such bars in their yards to keep them from thieves ... and I wonder whether they realize they are following a New Testament precedent of burying a talent in the ground. <digression off> Sorry about that; I wasn’t sufficiently clear. What I was trying to get across was that the gold trade coins—such as the florin and the ducat—which worked so well for the merchants, were too valuable for everyday use. Ducats were circulating currency in some countries (eg the Netherlands) and not in others (eg Austria), but anything smaller than a single ducat was lose-ably small. The silver dollar on the other hand “could be regularly used as currency” by the people as a whole, much as modern people use $50 bills or £20 notes. In hindsight I can see that I was asking that poor adverb to do too much. Sorry. Later, John
Haha, poor adverb. If I had to choose, I would probably go with the Athenian tetradrachm and the drachms and tetradrachms of Alexander the Great. Those types spread the idea of coinage farther than any other.
