A REALLY old ancient gold coin

One thing I really enjoy collecting is REALLY old coinage. The older the better!

I think what amazes me the most is that the gold & silver in the oldest coinages wasn’t mined like it is today with diesel powered machinery.

It was mined by slaves in dangerous conditions with a high fatality rate and low life expectancy. There is literally someone’s blood, sweat and tears in our ancient coins.

The further back you go the more primitive the conditions would have been.

Prior to this my oldest coin was an obol of Miletus from the late 6th century BC (~520BC).

Well....that record got broken today! I picked up this itsy bitsy teeny tiny electrum (but it looks like high gold content) 1/24th stater from Ionia.

I can't believe it's from the 7th century BC! We're talking about the times of Homer here! Several centuries before the Greek-Persian Wars that led to the fame of Leonidas and his 300 Spartans.



Sadly for me I don't think I'll be able to go much further back as this coin was minted around the time of the invention of coinage in Lydia xD.

P.S. Keep in mind that even a teeny tiny electrum coin like this was about a day's wages and thus far too valuable to go buy a loaf of bread or make daily transactions.





IONIA. Uncertain mint. Ca. 650-600 BC. EL 1/24 stater or myshemihecte (6mm, 0.56 gm). NGC Choice VF 4/5 - 5/5. Lydo-Milesian standard. Symmetrical geometric floral design resembling fleur-de-lis / Incuse square. SNG Kayhan -. Elektron I 33. Linzalone 1142.

 

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Nice, I love them too.

 

Thats a super cool coin. I am courious what one runs as far as price but I know its not polite to ask...

 

Its okay no worries .

Mine was $300. Not bad at all considering it’s gold (or at least 50%) and it’s 2,600 years old.

 

A lot of the electrum for early coinage may not have been mined, but instead collected as naturally-occurring nuggets from river beds, similar to how gold was recovered in the Klondike and other alluvial river bed sources.

For later metal sources though, you're probably right, slaves did the mining and conditions were likely terrible.

 

Nice score!

 

Very nice! Are there any theories on what the obverse design is supposed to represent?

 

That's true. I always imagined that the "easy" gold was used for religious artifacts and such since I imagine people collected gold long before coinage was in use.

One thing I know for sure though is that there was FAR less gold in circulation back in 600BC. I assume only the wealthy would be using electrum coins like this. I don't think normal people had them laying around xD

 

From what I've read so far the obverse could potentially be either a seal or a lion/panther.

 

Great pickup, @Gam3rBlake.

Very interesting old coinage. I sometimes wonder how ancient people handle such tiny coins.

 

These Lydian, Ionian, etc types are on my list of "Coins to get someday", but for the time being, I have to stay focused!

Unfortunately, this example could provide some ammo for the anti-third party grading folks around here. I'm a slab collector, and I'm even thinking, "How can something be graded Ch VF with a 4/5 strike when you can't even tell what the obverse was supposed to be?!".

All in fun, I'm guessing that some runs of these coins were probably indeterminant when they left the mint? One of the interesting quirks of extremely ancient coins I suppose!

 

They kept them in their mouth!

 

Yeah I don't think they had very detailed portraits even right when they were made. My guess is people didn't care about how pretty the image was as long as it had the correct amount of precious metals.

It's also important to remember how tiny these coins are. Getting ANY kind of detail in an image on such a tiny coin would've been an immense challenge in the 7th century BC. I imagine a Ch VF full stater coin would have much more detail just due to having a larger flan to put details on.

 

I really like these blobby coins, although it's not more then two millenia old, this 8th century 1 Massa coin (2.45 g) from Javanese Shilendra dynasty resembles those Greek archaic incuse coins.
This one really feels dense when I roll it around my fingers.

 

Only when they died .

Obols in particular. They believed payment was required for Charon the ferryman to transport their souls across the underworld.

Those with no friend or families to follow these rites would be forced to wander the underworld for 100 years before being allowed to cross.

At least that's what I've read. :]

 

Nice ones! I could've sworn someone told me that the incuse punches were meant as a mark to show that the gold was pure right down to the core. AKA: Not plated

 

Certainly not my field of expertise, but I always assumed that the punches were meant to serve as the "Stamp of Approval" with respect to weight and purity, and to make them at least a little difficult to counterfeit. If someone wanted to produce a counterfeit, then they could just punch the slug before plating, so it seems to me that exposing the core wouldn't be the purpose.

I'm sure there are plenty of people in here that have a more definitive answer than that though.

 

I think it's the obverse that I read was the seal of approval. I can't remember for sure though.

One thing I DO remember is that in ancient times counterfeiting was no joke. It was basically seen as a form of treason and convicted counterfeiters were subjected to horrible punishment. The lucky ones got a clean death.

What's even crazier is that it was like that way even up to the American Revolution. There are some Continental Notes printed by Benjamin Franklin that say:
"To counterfeit is death".

Nowadays counterfeiting isn't a capital crime but it's crazy how long it was one because of how much damage a single counterfeiter could do to an economy by undermining the faith in the currency of that nation.

 

I always imagined them having some sort of pouch for coins & valuables.

Even something like rabbit hide pouch would work at keeping all the coins secure inside as long as the pouch wasn’t stolen.

Then the owner could simply open their pouch, pull out the coin, and hand it to the payee.

For me the question was opposite. I always wondered how the Romans could carry around those GIANT Sestertius & Dupondius coins that weighed over an ounce.

They’d have to carry nearly a half pound of copper coinage to get the purchasing power of a single small silver denarius.

Imagine buying a horse with Sesterces! xD

 

Hey Donna just wanted to correct something:

It turns out I was looking at the 1/12th stater when I said a seal or lion.

Apparently this one is supposed to be a "floral pattern" of some kind. Perhaps a flower?