Ancient dating game

A popular game on this and other forums is post coins by
date, usually going back in time. Greek and Roman Provincial
coins many times have symbols that can be used for dating
them to a specific year or time. Would it be possible to start
a thread that has one or the other issuers? I my self do not
have any coins from this time but I enjoy watching the other
" Back in Time" threads. Just a thought.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

There are many ancients not datable precisely enough to make this practical. There are many coins with 'open dating' including some dated to a month but many others are questionable even to a century span.

 

It wouldn't work by year exactly, but you could do it by century or something like that. I remember doing one several years ago forward in time by century, it worked as was fun. You just have to figure out how to deal with the coins that are hard to nail down to one century. Just remember to let having fun trump the established rules and it works out ok.

 

I think this would be fun to try by year... I bet we could probably manage "within a year of" pretty well for a large range. Going backwards would make sense, and for the early BC years we might have to switch to 5 or 10 year spans.

I would be game if one of our medievalists wanted to start us off. Maybe at the year 1499?

Suggested rules:
If nobody gets the exact year of issue within 6 hours of the previous post, move to "within a year" (e.g. for 1499, anything securely dateable to the 1498-1500 range would work).
If nobody gets "within a year" for 12h, move to "within 5 years".
If nobody gets "within 5 years" for 24h, move to "within 10 years".
(or something like that.)
Note: The possible days of the coin's minting can't just overlap with the range, but must fall entirely within it.

 

Great idea! I will start it off by my 1499 Sachsen coin....

AV Goldgulden 1499 Leipzig Mint
Friedrich III
24mm/ 3.50 g.

 

I started a thread on the world coins forum that is counting backward by year. We just got to the 18th century

I thought it might be fun once that thread has gone back as far as we can by year to open it up per decade.

I also was thinking that once we get back far enough to have a mod move it over here and see if we could get from 2017 all the way back to 650 BC . Just a thought

 

1499 Sachsen...Beautiful coin, @panzerman !

 

By century would be the best idea IMO. There's a thread on another forum I am a member of (but very rarely post in) that is doing this by decade and they are at around the 500s AD now (they started at 1500) but its taken several years to get to that point and often they have gotten stuck on a certain decade for long periods of time without anything to post.

 

But we are better than them, right! I imagine some of our members can sometimes post 10 years in a row, no sweat. And the rules should fix the getting stuck problem.
6h wait --> within a year
12h wait --> within 5 years
24h wait --> within 10 years
48h wait --> within 25 years
(and surely we wouldn't need to get to a coarser grain than that...)

Of course if someone can fill in a past missed year, they can put it in later. And when @Curtisimo's world coin thread gets back to 1500, it can be linked to our thread. (But I wouldn't want to wait until they get there...)

In any case, @panzerman has got us off to a rip roaring start!! 1498 anyone?

 

OK, looks like I will have to do some work to get this thread going. (I'm trying, @tibor!)

We're past the 12h mark, so we just need something that was struck within 5 years either side of 1498 (i.e. 1493-1503). The coin posted for 1499 doesn't count.

@Aethelred? @TheRed? @AnYangMan? @Quant.Geek? @Loong Siew? @TypeCoin971793?

 

Since you named many of our group who have any coins that modern, you might have done as well here starting on the other end but telling a 501BC from a 500BC or a 510BC will make that hard to handle with 48 hour spacing being the norm, at least. Concrete dating is available for relatively few ancients.

 

My oldest coins are from China:


China Shang Dynasty 1766-1154 BCE
Ant Nose Ge Liu Zhu
2.6g 19.5mm x 11mm
very scarce Hartill 1.10


China Shang Dyn 1766-1154 BCE
Ant Nose Ge Liu Zhu 17.4mm x 10mm
very scarce Hartill 1.10

 

Yeah, once (or rather if) we get back that far, we'll have to modify the timing rules.

Here's another option for right now:
6h ---> precisely dated coin, not your own (preferably from a post on cointalk)
12h ---> within a year or two
24h ---> within a year or two, not your own coin
48h ---> enough already, someone fill the gap with the closest they can find!

?

I left out quite a few who might help here: @RAGNAROK, @FitzNigel, @Mat, @seth77, @Voulgaroktonou, @ancientcoinguru...

 

Excellent plan, from 1499 down. I’ll be with you starting from about 1335 and especially around 1000-1030 I can help out very well.

 

One of my main goals in numismatics is trying to date things as much as possible, and while you have very exact dates for Roman and early Byzantine issues, the medieval period and especially the feudal issues are often quite hard to date, many being assigned to a certain rule with no other details, not to mention the immobilise types.

 

One of the things I like about this project is that we may learn quite a bit about dating practices & techniques, but also about our own coins. (Just now in perusing my collection for coins that might be relevant, I narrowed down a Hungarian coin to 1488... at least according to one important reference.)

@seth77: I suspect that Islamic coins will help a lot in the medieval period; many of them have exact AH dates. (Overlap should be sufficient in this case, since they won't correspond to a single CE year.)

1498 is AH 903-4.

 

I know nothing about Islamic coins, my interest is mainly Late Empire, Medieval Europe, mainly France, the Crusades and some 15th century Italian.

To give an example of what I was saying earlier, let's take for instance the really precise dating of, say, Magnentius, Constantius II and Nepotian AE2's from Rome in 350. You can assign many of them to a very precise date and issue. Contrast that to the Le Mans deniers introduced by Herbert l'Eveille-chien, which were minted from around 1025 and continued to be struck by his successors for many generations after his demise around 1035.

 

OK, I have this one....

AV Goldgulden 1497 Frankfurt Mint 3.47g./ 24mm.
Imperial City of Frankfurt
Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I of Austria

 

When it comes to Roman precise dating you could not beat the issues dated with A.U.C. dates (Hadrian 874 and Pacatian 1001 - are there others?). Certainly there are all those TRP dated coins and the Alexandrian L+numerals which allow dating to periods not always starting with January 1. The question is whether you are willing to accept derived dates based on studies of coins or whether you want things with real years indicated rather than titles or other clues that can derive dates.

 

And my fellow Canuck comes up golden again! woot woot!!

Let's make that one our 1497, and I'll post three more (not mine) that I found earlier today for 1498. All three can be dated to a two year span overlapping with that year, but mostly I'm posting them because I think they're so damn cool.

First we have the first numismatic reference to the founder of the Mughal empire in India, Babur, struck in AH 903 (1497-8):


INDIA. Mughal Kings. Zahir al-Din Muhammad Bahadur (Babur), as Sultan of Ferghana. 1494-1504. AR Tanka (4.66 gm). Struck during his occupation of Samarkand 1497-1498 (AH 903). A silver tanka of the Timurid sultan Husayn Baiqara, countermarked with the the Persian legend "adl Sultan Zahir al-Din Muhammad Bahadur 903" in a leaf shaped punch. R. Grossman, "An Early Countermark of Babur," ONS Newsletter 133 (1992) (this coin); MWI -; KM -; Wright -; Album 2463 note. Coin VF, c/m EF. Extremely rare; the first numismatic reference to the founder of the Mughal dynasty. Link to coin on CNG site.

Next, for @Orfew and others, a stunning Henry VII groat dateable to 1498-99:

TUDOR. Henry VII. 1485-1509. AR Groat (25mm, 2.94 g, 5h). Facing Bust issue, class IIIc. London mint; im: lis issuant from rose. Struck 1498-1499. ҺNRIC’ × DI’ × GRΛ’ × RЄX × ΛGL’ × Z FRΛ’, crowned facing bust within double polylobe / POSVI DЄV’ × Λ DIVTO Є’ × mЄV/× CIVI TΛS × LOn DOn, long cross fourchée, with trefoil in each quarter. Cf. SCBI 23 (Ashmolean), 340-4 (for type); North 1705c; SCBC 2199. Good VF, toned, a few minor die breaks. Well struck on a broad flan. Rare initial mark and obverse legend variety with ‘ҺNRIC’. Link to coin on CNG site.

And finally, PIZZAMAN!!!


I kid you not, this dude was called Pizzaman. CROATIA, Dalmatia. Split (Spalato). As Venetian protectorate, 1491-1518. Æ Bagattino (17mm, 1.30 g, 10h). Venecija (Venice); Iacopo Pizzaman, mintmaster. Struck 1497-1498. Sveti Djam (St. Domnus), wearing episcopal regalia, standing facing, holding crozier / Nimbate facing half-length Lion of Sveti Marko (S. Marco), forepaw supporting open Gospel. Dobrinić, Novci 6.1.2.1; Dobrinić 4.3.3.1. VF, brown patina. Rare. Link to coin on CNG site.

(Sorry they're all CNG, would be nice to link to acsearch but they protect their images from reposting. )