My wife isn’t a collector of anything but dogs, but she politely oohs and aahs when I show her my latest acquisition for one of my collections. The only thing she’s entirely unimpressed by are early Greek factions — I suspect it’s because she needs her reading glasses to see them. Unfortunately, early Greek coins happen to be my coin collecting focus. So when this arrived in the mail today, instead of an ooh or an aah, or even one of those smiles suggesting she’s thinking she should have married one of her other options, all I got were laughs: Unstruck silver coin flan for hemitetartemorion 3 mm 0.113 grams I’ve never seen an unstruck ancient coin flan, so this got my attention. Coming to ancients from US error coins, a blank planchette really got my attention. To give you an idea of how tiny this thing is, here it is next to a Caria, Ionia 5th century bull tetartemorion at 0.145 grams, a Persis 2nd century Mithra hemidrachm at 14 mm and 1.48 grams, and a US penny. One reason I collect early Greek coins is because I am astounded that they were able to carve a die that minute without the aid of a magnifying glass. It seems impossible, all the more so because many times I can’t even see the design without a magnifying glass. And to think people conducted business with coins this small is astounding. In the days before cheap finely woven linens, accurate scales, and pockets, how did this even work? How did they get the coin to the agora? How wasn’t it lost passing from one hand to another? How did it even make it out of the house? How did it even make it to the house? At 3 mm this is my smallest collectible. Please share your smallest coin that could be made from a flan such as this. And if you have an unstruck flan, of any size, I’d really like to see it.
LMAO! That pic (and story) made me laugh hard. First time I've laughed all day. Whatever floats your boat man. That is pretty neat. IDK how you verify it is what it is but I'm sure there's something to it. I've never collected ancients but currently reading 100 Greatest Ancients of all time and really enjoying it.
Very interesting piece. That is one to be slabbed just to get the documentation on it. And you can never go too far with coins, especially ancients.
Here's a bronze planchet that was a hammer strike away from being a Judean prutah. It dates to the Second Temple Period Hasmonean to Herodian times, 135 - 4 BC. 7.6 X 8.8 mm, 0.42 gm. The Judean molds for casting flan strips were prepared by drilling shallow sockets into chalkstone. The "nipple" on one side of the blank is the result of the impression left by the point of the drill bit in the mold.
Very interesting, thanks for sharing. This is more what I would expect a flan to look like given the age.
Sometimes I appreciate small coins more because making a piece of art on a die that small takes a lot of skills. My fiancee is also not a collector or has any interest in coins but when I show her my newest additions and it look nice in her eyes she does appreciate them, but somehow the bigger the coin the better in her eyes, maybe I should buy a Ptolemy hockey puck for her. It is also funny when I show her a 20.000 dollar worth coin and I ask her what she thinks about it, she says "Oh that looks really nice, if you want a nice coin then buy that one", and then I ask her (as a joke) "what should I give max for it" and I get as response "60 euro or something", hmm... Maybe I should not tell her what I paid for some other coins I got.
those very small ones are fascinating really.. i wish i had some... but i do remember getting upset when i'd get a coin that was an ae1 or 2 and think "man, that guy rip me off"