Your First Ancient Coin

I'm fairly certain I've posted this before, but I'll do it again! My first was actually a medieval (of course) - I was fascinated by the Robin Hood legend and King Richard I (before I came to know better that the two aren't historically related...), and was dumb-founded to find a coin by Richard on e-bay for an affordable price! So, this was a birthday gift to myself in 2000:


French Feudal, Poitou
Richard I, r. 1168-1185; AR Denier, 17mm x 1 grams
Obv.: +RICARDUS REX, cross patée, annulet in third quarter
Rev.: PIC / TAVIE / NSIS, written in three parallel lines
Ref.: AGC 343A (1/a), Duplessy 926, Roberts 3887, SCBC 8008

So this opened me up to a world of coins outside the United States, and soon after I visited my local coin shop where I bought my first actual Ancient:


Imperial Rome
Caracalla, r. 198-217 A.D. (211 A.D.)
Rome Mint, AR Denarius, 20.28mm x 2.8 grams
Obv.: ANTONINVS PIVS AVG BRIT, Head of Caracalla, laureate, right
Rev.: P M TR P XIIII COS III P P; Pax, draped, advancing left, holding branch in right hand and sceptre in left hand
Ref.: RIC IV-1 Caracalla 184, p. 238.

This one attracted me because of how well done it was, and that one of his titles was the conqueror of Britain! Well, I was sold (and it was even cheaper than the Richard coin...)

 

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Yeah, agreed. We were an extremely competitive Business School, with high national rankings. The Ancient History courses were electives, which REALLY helped me cope with the stress! And, you are correct: my degree coursework REALLY helped me in my career!

 

Haha I know I know. In my defense though I bought it in the slab and totally got it for the coin and not the slab. It's my only slabbed coin and I still haven't decided if I have the courage to crack it out. I'd have to send it to Sear if I did for insurance purposes.

I read somewhere that these were one of the first "world" currencies and the majority were found outside of Greece. Very interesting about the Athena taboo I didn't know that.

 

My first coin was this little old thing

 

My first, a Julian II "Fel Temp" that I paid way too much for($45!) but after I saw the ancients at the store I couldn't leave without one. I didn't go looking for a coin at all, nor did I know much of anything about Roman history at the time, I just happened to wonder into an antiques shop and come across their coin display:

 

My first ancient was my avatar coin, a tribute penny. Bought it when I was in theology school because of its Gospel connection. It has lovely toning and I still think it has lots of eye-appeal.

 

Just do it, my friend! Join us!

 

Here's my very first ancient coin, an AE3 of Constantius II (337-361) with Fel Temp Reparatio reverse of soldier spearing fallen horseman, Sirmium mint:

I bought it in winter 1992-93. I was living at college, and the previous year had discovered a local coin store within walking distance of campus, which restarted my childhood interest in old US and foreign coins. I began making regular trips to the coin store to search their foreign junk boxes, or occasionally treat myself to a slightly nicer ID'd piece, and soon acquired a small group of interesting world coins, but there was no focus to my collecting.

I was aware that one could collect ancient coins, and the store did have a couple of (high-priced, to a broke college student) ancients in the case, but that winter they got some junk boxes of common ancients. This was shortly after the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, and lots of metal-detector finds from that region were entering the market. The $3 box was mainly late Roman bronzes, while the $5 had larger pieces, mainly Roman provincial with a few very worn Imperial bronzes and common Greek bronzes. Well, at these prices how could I resist? I bought a few coins, including this one (it was in the $3 box). The relatively good state of preservation appealed to me, the inscription looked like it might be readable, and the reverse showed a military scene- what's not to like?

But now I wanted to identify my treasures further, and in 1993 that was a problem. The Internet at that time was basically just email and text-only message boards (the World Wide Web didn't exist yet), so no help there. I went to the college library's reference section to see what they had. The only ancient coin-specific references on hand were Seth Stevenson's "Dictionary of Roman Coins" (which I have since found a valuable source of information, but not primarily an attribution guide) and Barclay V. Head's "Historia Nummorum" (ditto). There was also a Krause Standard Catalogue of World Coins (great book, but no use for ancients) and finally something called the "Coin Atlas", which was a nicely color-illustrated coffee-table-style book with maps and coin illustrations covering all periods of history. By sheer good luck, one of the Roman coins in the book exactly matched my Constantius II, even including the mintmark! Well, now I was definitely hooked and had to know everything about my coins. Soon I had the local coin shop order me a copy of David Sear's Roman Coins and Their Values (4th edition, the last single-volume edition). It was $50 or $60- quite a large sum compared to my coin budget- but I have not regretted the purchase since.

 

I think I have mentioned my first ancient in another thread but it's probably better placed in this, being a history buff from a very young age, I was always frustrated that I could not get my hands on anything ancient and did not know that coins were even being minted 2600 years ago, so you can imagine my delight when walking around a general flea market at Gold Coast Queensland AUS, when I stumbled across a stall with a tin of old coins in flips. So asked the question what is the oldest coin you have and told Roman Valentinian around 360AD, how much I asked $25 but you can have it for $20. Amazed that I had a 1700 year old antique in my hand I was instantly addicted, it turned out to be a Gratian when I learnt how to read the inscription, little did I know that it would be the first of many and they would all be much older again.

 

No photo available, unfortunately, but my first Roman coin was a sestertius of Antoninus Pius. I was 15, and I took the bus downtown (Dayton, Ohio) to the Penn-Ohio convention and show at the Biltmore Hotel. June, 1963. I recall they had one of the five 1913 Liberty Head nickels on display, and one of the 1943 bronze Lincoln cents.
It was all so overwhelming to a kid at his first show. I picked a good one to break myself in.
A lot of dealers on the bourse floor, and one of them had a cigar box of Roman coins @ $3 each. I was amazed that an almost 2000 year old coin could even exist, much less be in my pathetic price range. It was in really nice condition, with a clear portrait and complete lettering. I also bought the Zander Klawans book on reading and dating Roman Imperial Coins (which I still have, but the coin was stolen while I was in the Army some 50 years ago). I did write in the book, on the page depicting Antoninus, that the reverse showed "Venus - goddess of love" (in case that might assist any of you in ID'ing the coin). I know I determined the date of the coin by the TR P indicated on the obverse, but I never wrote it down.
One thing that struck me at the time was that the design was so similar to our modern coins, with a "head" (portrait of a real person) and a "tail" (a representation of something of importance to the issuing nation). Everything on it just looked so 'familiar'.
I have since obtained a handful of silver denarius (should that be 'denarii'?) (of Antoninus, of course - you never forget your "First") on ebay about ten years ago, and have always wanted to get a sestertius of Antoninus with the 'Brittania' reverse (which reminds me of the large bronze pennies of England).
(My "first coin", by the way, was a large bronze penny of England, which I obtained from a WWII ETO veteran who was the father of a schoolmate. Until that time, at age 8, I had no idea that people in other lands used money any different than ours. So young, so naive.... so damned long ago).

 

Last March or April I was browing the internet and came across someone selling some ancients. I had no idea you could buy them I thought they all went to museums or something. So I did some researching and found out about vcoins and picked up this Philip V

 

This was my humble first ancient purchase ...

Valentinian I AE19




... yah, there was just something about it, so I randomly pulled the trigger and bought it ($25 delivered) .. and I never looked back (like a switch going off, I immediately stopped buying moderns and started buying these far more cool and far less expensive ancient coins!!)

 

Awesome first all.

I think I got this in 2008 (mayne 2007). I've been activly collecting us coins since 96/97. The local coin shop had some cheap ancients on a bulletin board but it took my a while to actually check em out(9/10 years).




Constantine the Great
A.D. 308 - 337. minted late in the reign.
obv. CONSTANTINVS MAX AVG, diademe and draped faces right.
rev. GLORIA EXERCITVS
SMNA

 

I collected Irish and UK pre-decimal coins when a kid in the 1970s, but there were no coin shops in my town - once or twice a year I could get to a coin shop, so it was slow going. My collection was boosted by the donation of my aunt's collection/accumulation in the early 1980s. Every few years, I would buy Seaby/Spink "Standard Catalogue of British Coins" (SCBC) but didn't add many coins for nearly 20 years. I had two summers as a bus conductor in the mid-80s and got one 1826 shilling in change and another from 1917. Then, in the summer of 2001, in Madrid one Sunday morning, I wandered out of the fringes of the Rastro market into Plaza Mayor and happened on the coin stalls and bought a denarius of Marcus Aurelius as Caesar. Unfortunately, the coin itself was stolen in a burglary in 2004 (along with all the Roman silver coins I had at that time - fortunately, not many). I may have a photo' somewhere, but not accessible right now. While SCBC lists a few Roman coins, I didn't have any catalogue listing my coin- I bought Sear's RCV Millennium edition volume 1, but of course it didn't go as far as Marcus Aurelius , then the second volume when it came out - while that did cover the era, it didn't have the coin in question. I finally captured it with RIC - volume 4 was on sale in amazon.co.uk for only £12.50 back sometime in 2005 - by which time, the coin was gone, but still!

Anyway, the coin I'm sticking in is my second ancient coin, an Istros drachm bought in March, 2002 from Spink. It's not a good photo', but a nice coin and maybe the heads looking in each direction is a suitable coin for January:



After that, I discovered eBay and so many other venues and ways of spending money on coins

ATB,
Aidan.

 

This is the first ancient coin I purchased:

Constantine I
AE3 or AE4
307-337 AD
Obv: CONSTANTINVS MAX AVG, diademed bust right
Rev: GLORIA EXERCITAS, two soldiers standing to either side of one standard. SMANA in Exergue.
Other: sacred money made in Antioch at the 'A' workshop.

 

I'm an academic with a classics background but, like many, I was unaware of the availability and affordability of ancient coins. Since this first purchase in 2003, they've become a way to enrich my teaching and my life in general. My ability to keep up with this hobby has waxed and waned depending on life circumstances, so I really should have more coins and know more about them given how long I've collected, but forums like this help keep up knowledge and interest. So here's my first, from Forum Ancient Coins, $30. I bought it because I found the use of the Chi-Rho on Constantinian Dynasty coins to be a fascinating intersection of history and religion. Constantine has been my collecting focus ever since.

Constantius II, 324 - 61 A.D.; Struck 348-50 A.D.
Bronze AE-3
Obverse legend: D N CONSTAN-TIVS P F AVG, pearl diademed draped and cuirassed bust right.
Reverse legend: FEL TEMP REPARATIO, emperor stands l. in galley holding phoenix on globe in r. and labarum (standard Christogram banner) in l., Victory steers seated in stern, ASIS and symbol in ex;
RIC 243, gVF, 2.41g, 17.5mm, 0o, Siscia mint. Ex: Forum Ancient Coins.

 

Nice coin! Also, I am happy to see another academic here.

 

someone I know gave these ancient Jerusalem coins to me. I imagine these coins are very common?

 

I can't make out the details of these coins except the one at 3 o'clock in the second photo, which looks like a "GLORIA EXERCITUS" reverse with two soldiers standing on either side of two standards. This was a common reverse type of the fourth-century Constantine dynasty. Not really an "ancient Jerusalem" coin but very, very Roman, and yes, generally quite common, unless there's some rare variation, which is unlikely. I will let others weigh in on what else they see in these photos.

Actually, if you scroll up a bit, you will see a few "GLORIA EXERCITUS" coins in this thread of "first coins." The reverse means "Glory of the Army," if we take exercitūs to be a fourth declension singular noun in the genitive case.

 

Thanks for the info. Would it be safe to soak these in acetone then rinse, or should I leave them alone?