Interesting.. I also like the Featured Coin links on the bottom of the page. (you can create 10 other threads with those also )
You should read the buffalo coin one. 50 dollar 24 carrot gold buffalo. I hope someone's out there that's nice enough to spend it as face value XD
Allegedly the oldest coin, because China and India started minting coinage at roughly the same time period. No one can say for sure who struck the first coin, though my money would be on the Chinese as they had a history of making coin-like charms for thousands of years already prior to 700 BCE. Even the article doesn't say this is the oldest coin, but one of the oldest. A very subtle but important distinction.
Though few are even aware of it the Chinese were even producing currency (bank notes) as early as 118 BC. And as mentioned, they were producing coins long, long before that. But, whenever you Google a question like what is the oldest coin, the coins of Lydia will be what comes up. That's because most of the books written on the subject say that Lydia was the first producer of coins. However the books are wrong, as many books are.
i have spades, knives and even very old shells that were used as money, but i hesitate to call them what we term "coins". now this may be the old "you say tomato"(political correctness) thang, but when in Rome....(do as the Chinese do)
Another interesting article on the Lydia Lion: http://oldestcoins.reidgold.com/article.html Alyattes, king of Lydia, was my great x something grandfather. I descend from Alyattes, on my mother's side, through Comfort Bigelow, my great x 6 grandmother. She was born September 23, 1707, in Marlboro, Mass. That's assuming they have the genealogy correct, and when you get back that far you never know for sure. I have found over 300 kings that I descend from so far, and I'm trying to get some of their coins. I collected large cents and Indian head cents as a teenager and genealogy has gotten me back into coins 50 years later.
Here is a nice post of a couple Lydian coins from member @AncientJoe : https://www.cointalk.com/threads/walwet-hemihekte-and-hekte.270027/
