So after about 6 years of faithful service, it was finally time to change the battery in my little coin scale. When I got it cleared off and flipped it over and took the battery compartment off, I heard a rattle inside. Thinking it might be a screw knocked loose, I tried to shake it out before I had to disassemble the entire thing. To my surprise - Out fell a tiny 5mm Kyzikos tetartemorion, which I guess had fallen in there about 4 years ago when I bought a huge lot of these from Kairos Numismatik (whatever happened to them?) And I thought I had sold them all! This just reinforces - I really cannot fathom how Greeks used coins like these for daily commerce 2,400 years ago! How did they not lose a dozen a week? Post any coins you lost and later found, or any so small that you'd never find again if you did drop them!
Yes, I have lost one of those Kyzikos fractionals just like you did, and I'm still hoping it magically surfaces like yours did!
I'm still looking for one I dropped a couple of weeks ago that apparently vanished into thin air between my hand and the floor. I didn't even hear it land.
I've got a half-dime on the lose myself... pretty sure it's hiding between 2 floor boards and I'm too cheap to rip em up to find it lol
Great story @Finn235 Glad to read you found a bonus coin This teeny tiny thing was caught hiding in my shag carpet: Read more about it here: https://www.cointalk.com/threads/th...-mysterious-missing-coin.362762/#post-4604549
I have had similar things happen on occasion! This reminds me of Michael Shutterly's Coinweek article last year (14 April 2021), “The One That Got Away: The Trials and Tribulations of Building an Ancient Coin Exhibit." While preparing an exhibit on archaic electrum coinage for the 2016 ANA World’s Fair of Money, he somehow dropped or lost his Phanes EL Tetartermorion (quite a rare and important coin of which only a few are known), and never found it. (If he does find it, I hope he publishes an update somewhere.)
I've wondered the same thing myself. Did they use them like gold dust, just weighing out the appropriate amount? That's great that you found yours again!
Who was it that wrote in one of his plays that people used to keep small change in their cheeks? Aristophanes? If this really was common practice, then swallowing, rather than dropping, suddenly becomes the problem. Finding it would of course easy, but the search would be less pleasant. (Also, you'd have to wait at least a day, which is kind of impractical when you're waiting in line to buy a measure of wine). Not to mention the spreading of contagious diseases... Here are a few of my critters. Four milimeters is about as small as they get:
Yes, Aristophanes. In the late 1980's as I was between engagements in the numismatic trade, I worked for a while as a freelance proofreader for the Encyclopedia Brittanica in Chicago, which at the time was doing a new edition of the Great Books of the Western World series. I read a large chunk of Aristophanes, working from a heavily edited 1952 edition against the new translation. I noticed that "fishscales" carried in the mouth had been revised to "obols" in the new edition.
Wow! Water into wine I've heard of, but fish scales into obols, that's a new level to me. Do you know what prompted the change? Is there some ambivalence in Greek that leaves room for interpretation?
Here's a couple of things I did when I dropped small items near my jewelry bench. 1. Turn out the lights and then use a high intensity flashlight to search the floor area and 2. If there were stones in the earring try using an ultraviolet light in your search, some gemstone materials fluoresce and they will readily appear glowing in their hiding place.
Don't know. Perhaps somebody thought it best to replace the nickname, "fishscales," with a more proper coin name. Apparently U.S. silver Trimes were called "fishscales" at one time, and I guess the term can be applied to any small silver coin.
