Featured In circulation over 700 years later

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Another example is massive use of Flavian bronze coins by Ostrogoths in VI century, about 500 years after the coins were produced. Here is my Vespasian Judaea Capta as with XLII (for 42 nummi = 1/12 siliqua) value mark.

 

Well... it's too big to be a denarius and Otho only issued denarii and aureii, so it's not an ancient coin . Paduan, perhaps?

 

Fascinating thread. throws light on all sorts of things, including the divergence of views upon the objectivity of probability statements. Needless to say, I have no personal doubts about general chronological frameworks!

I will try to explain why I find this interesting though - using an alternative relevant example.

Mitchiner in his "Coinage of Southern India" Vol II page 112ff gives an account of about 30 ancient Greek coppers found in South India (Tamilnadu) - various cities - many from about 200 BC. We have to guess how they got there - nobody knows for sure. Mitchiner is not dogmatic but his guess is that they were carried in the purses of Greek individuals from the Eastern Mediterranean travelling to trade before c. 30 BC.

He also points to large numbers of 4th century Roman coppers found in the same region, and seems to suggest (?) that these were used for making bulk purchases using current Roman coin by the Romans, over the period 330 AD to 450 AD.

Thus Mitchiner sees two separate explanations here. Personally, I would prefer a single explanation along these lines.

Around the late 4th/5th century AD, frequent changes in the Roman copper coin standard would create a lot of small copper that was no longer valid or needed, and which would thus drift towards scrap metal dealers within the Roman empire. Somebody spotted that parts of Tamilnadu were at the very beginnings of coin use, and hit on the idea of buying up sacks of this old coin cheap from scrap metal dealers, in bulk, to ship out to Tamilnadu pretty much as a commodity. The idea caught on to some extent, and the 30 Greek pieces were just some old junk that had ended up in the sacks of scrap metal obsolete coins/flans they bought, and probably shipped over to India in the later 4th/5th century AD

Am curious to get the reaction of others. Mitchiner is not being dogmatic here, nor am I, but which idea seems to most probable to readers?

Rob Tye

 

Wow I thought the random 1939/40 nickels you sometimes find we’re the oldest coins that commonly stayed.