Hi! Can anyone identify these coins (they were found in Venezuela)? Any help is greatly appreciated! Thanks!
That is pretty amazing that they were lost in Venezuela and they appear to be ancient Roman coins to me.
What are the weights and diameters. Fun digs. I agree Venezuela? There has got to be more to the story.
Your first coin is Licinius II like the coin below Licinius II A.D. 321-324 19x20mm 3.5gm DN VAL LICIN LICINIVS NOB C; helmeted, cuirassed, spear across right shoulder, shield on left arm. IOVI CONS-ERVATORI; Jupiter standing l., chlamys across l. shoulder, leaning on eagle tipped-sceptre and holding Victory on globe in r. hand; eagle with wreath to l. on ground; to r., captive; in right field an X over II and an episemon. in ex. SMHB RIC VII Heraclea 54 You should always post obverse and reverse; then the mint might be able to be verified. The mints that struck this type are Heraclea, Nicomedia, Cyzicus, Antioch and Alexandria.
your second coin reminds me of the coin below; but a reverse image would help. Sikyonia. Sikyon Æ12 / Dove Date: 330-270 BC Dove flying left Σ within wreath, with ties above BCD Peloponnesos 304.2
Can you give more details about the finds? Venezuela was not part of the Roman Empire What Metal Detector was used? Is it your finds?
in the 16th-18th c. Europeans in America sometimes used old small Roman coins for trade with the natives. These ancient coins were rarely accepted in Europe for small change, but the Indians could accept them.
There was a paper about it but presently I don't remember which one. It was never a mass phenomenon. I was told this also in the 1980s by an ancient coin dealer in Toronto. It is true that little 4th c. bronze coins have always been discovered in Europe, sometimes in large quantities, but what could they do with them? They weren't sought after by collectors, the metal was valueless... They were sometimes accepted as small change in Europe, and sometimes shipped to the colonies for trade with the natives. Two 4th c. Roman coins have recently been discovered in a 16th c. castle in Japan. I'm sure they came there in some Portuguese pocket.
Amazing. Roman coins did get around to a lot of places on the globe that the Romans themselves didn't make it to. I found one in Georgia. My find was in a colonial (probably 18th century) context. I imagine these Venezuelan finds have a similar story.
I found the paper I had read about this: https://www.cointalk.com/attachments/precolumbian-coins-in-america-pdf.1549009/
The Spanish and Portuguese colonizing South America, Central America, the Caribbean and areas of North America would need to bring coins with them during the early days of exploration and conquest, since the New World mints of Potosi, Bolivia (established in 1573), Mexico (established May 11, 1535), Santo Domingo (1542 to 1552) and Lima (established August 21, 1565) did not exist prior to those dates/years. I know that Spain produced very limit quantities of silver coinage for use in the colonies. Also, there's evidence that a limited number of 8 reales were produced by making cast molds of Spanish Charles and Johanna coins. But for copper coinage, the coinage of everyday use, it makes sense that these coins would be introduced, including old Roman 4th century bronze coins, until local minting was able to fulfil that need. Even then, with the focus on minting gold and silver coins to help the Spanish Crown finance ongoing wars and pay the loans provided European banking houses , copper coinage initially was sparse. For example, the copper 2 maravedis coins produced by the Mexico City mint between1542 and 1551 list in Kruase for $500 in Good and $2,500 in VF - not cheap coins for sure and those prices are most certainly outdated.
but where is the proof of all these 4th century LRB's found in the New World? I do have two LRB's used in Spain in the 1600's that were countermarked as 4 maravedis.
You might want to take a look at the article provided through a link by GinoLR. I haven't read it yet, but it looks really interesting. Did these coins make it to South America? Perhaps, but I am not sure how much proof is out there. To be sure there must have been a small change problem initially among the colonists, it is possible that those small rusty Roman coins, quite plentiful in the Old World, were used also in South America.
Of course there have been ancient coins found in the New World. I was specifically talking about ancients brought to the New World for use as stop gap coinage- if you had read the posts you would have seen that. I first read that article in 2006 and have since read it again. He closes by stating-- "We are dealing either with instances of deliberate fraud or with claims that are so totally inconsistent with what we know of human behavior, past or present, that they must be disregarded."
