This is the search result for worlds oldest coin. Wonder what that would go for on EBAY? http://rg.ancients.info/lion/
Wow pretty nifty.. After all the talk from my last thread on rarest coins.. This might very well be the top contender
I remember when those first came out. I knew they would fail since they didn't fit in any gum ball machines. Toll boths also rejected them. No place for them in a Walmart cash register either.
You can get them for under $2000. Heck, there's a number of OLDER hemihektes in a CNG online auction now. They're estimated at only $200 each. http://www.cngcoins.com/Coin.aspx?CoinID=155073
Chinese don't even KNOW what these are. There's 8 plain types, one inscribed type, and a few later types with real designs. I'm considering bidding myself!
Debate will rage on for time immemorial about what is the oldest coin. People have asserted various claims over the years, but quite frankly no one really can say with certainty where the first coins came from. The ancients didn't exactly leave a veritable written record of their coinage, nor did they date their coins in any pattern which would be recognized in the 21st century. Then you get into the whole is it a coin or a piece of money, or was it some amulet or tool discussion. Some will claim the Lydians created them, other say they came from Ionia, or even Thrace. If you go on monetary instruments and not strictly some little round coin, but something like a bronze knife or spade perhaps they came from China.
It is a best guess sometimes, but there comes a point when we really do know its a coin, as judged by experts. Even though there may be and probably will be earlier finds, it still sends shivers through me to think that coin was from beofre the time of Christ. How primitive peoples lives were when carrying that coin, you know...
I don't know that they were so primitive really, in fact the Greeks had knowledge that was largely lost later on due to wars etc. I like to think that this is perhaps one of the older forms of money used by Greek colonists in Olbia(now S. Ukraine): It is conjectured that these dolphins started out as some little amulets to the river god Borysthenes, but evolved into usage as monetary instruments later on. This piece is conjectured to have been created ca. 650 BC. Unfortunately I no longer own this piece, my daughter coveted it and traded a Moldavia-Wallacia 2 Para from 1773 for it. This is one of the world's earliest coins in the strict definition of the term: These little Miletos, Ionia 1/12th staters date from roughly the same time period, the 7th century BC - and are fairly common and readily available to collectors - unlike the Lydian coins that are purported to be the first. They have a nice lion motif with a small dolphin on the front, and a fascinating star pattern on the reverse. I think I paid somewhere like $25 or $30 for this a few years ago.
Saor - Where are you getting the date for the 1/12 stater? Everything I've read puts it in the late 6th century, c. 525 BC.
