Message:

<p>[QUOTE=&quot;dougsmit, post: 998112, member: 19463&quot;]Three answers for one question:</p><p>&nbsp;&nbsp; </p><p>&nbsp; In the Eastern Mediterranean in what is today Western Turkey, Greek speaking city-states started trading lumps of a naturally occurring alloy of gold and silver called electrum.&nbsp; When someone (probably in the early 6th century BC) started certifying these lumps by impressing them with a design, ancient coins were born.&nbsp;&nbsp; The design was cut in reverse in a die which was struck with a hammer producing the coin.&nbsp; Shortly afterward coins appeared in pure gold and pure silver rather than the mixture.&nbsp; Our example (left) from around 500 BC is a silver stater of the island state Aigina and was struck with the city badge – a sea turtle.&nbsp; The idea of a second design for the reverse was not used everywhere at first but this coin has a decorative punch.&nbsp; Coins of this early style are termed ‘Archaic’.</p><p>&nbsp;&nbsp; </p><p>&nbsp; Around the same time in India pieces of silver were certified by stamps of various types often with several different ones overlapping on one irregular shape of silver cut to weight.&nbsp; These continued to be produced until after contact with Greek culture (including the invasion of Alexander the Great) gradually introduced more Western style struck coins.&nbsp; Our example is late in the period of the punchmarked coins, Mauryan India (Samprati, 216-207 BC).&nbsp; </p><p>&nbsp;&nbsp; </p><p>&nbsp; The third birthplace of coinage was ancient China.&nbsp; After centuries of experiments with cast bronze forms like knives that did not cut and spades that did not dig, they settled on round coins with a square hole allowing hundreds to be strung together for easy handling.&nbsp; Chinese coins were cast with the design rather than being struck with dies until well after the start of modern history when machine made coins were made still with the square hole.&nbsp; My example reads Yi Tao (one knife) and dates to about 300BC.&nbsp; </p><p>&nbsp;&nbsp; </p><p>&nbsp; While the last two origins shown here are available to collectors today, the rest of my program will be concerned with the development of struck coinage of the Greek model.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

Your name or email address:

Do you already have an account?

• No, create an account now.
• Yes, my password is:
• Forgot your password?

Stay logged in