Options
I finally got my first ever Ancient gold coin
MKUltra24
Posts: 652 ✭✭✭✭
I’ve purchased ancient coins before but previously all of my coins were silver.
Yesterday though I finally won a bid on an Ancient gold coin and it’s my first ancient gold coin ever.
Feel free to share your first ancient gold coin here too 
Justinian I the Great (AD 527-565). AV solidus (22mm, 4.46 gm, 7h). NGC Choice AU 4/5 - 3/5. Constantinople, 5th officina, ca. AD 545-565. D N IVSTINI-ANVS PP AVG, cuirassed bust of Justinian I facing, wearing plumed helmet with pendilia, globus cruciger in right hand, shield decorated with horseman motif in left / VICTORI-A AVGG Є, angel standing facing, staff surmounted by staurogram in right hand, globus cruciger in left; star in right field, CONOB in exergue. Sear 140.
12
Comments
Whether this counts as an "ancient" coin or not depends on your definition of "ancient", and where you put the boundary between "ancient" and "mediaeval".
Personally, I put the line at 500 AD, making Roman coins "ancient" and Byzantine coins "mediaeval" rather than "ancient". But that's just me.
Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations"
Apparently I have been awarded one DPOTD.
That’s a fair point regarding whether it fits the academic definition of “ancient” which is 500 AD or earlier.
The problem with that though is will the definition change over time? Or in 10,000 years will they consider the year 2021 to be “ancient times” ?
For me personally I call anything over 1,000 years old “ancient”. xD
I guess it could also be considered an early medieval coin.
Very cool!
My YouTube Channel
Still waiting on mine - but some of these Byzantine coins are on my want list. Cool coin from interesting times.
My current "Box of 20"
My first gold coin is also a Byzantine solidus. Year-wise later than yours.
Congrats!!
Collecting interests: Coins from Latin American (2020-present)
Sports: NFL & NHL
Thanks! I think it’s cool too!
I like to imagine who owned the coin before me and what they spent it on.
I have read that gold coins were mostly used by the rich and that common people usually used silver & copper coinage in every day transactions since a gold coin like this is worth too much to go buy a loaf of bread or some eggs.
Same here, I won it from Heritage Auctions a few day’s ago and can’t wait to get it!
I also picked up this drachm from the Parthian Kingdom. ^_^
Wow! Yours is amazing! Great luster!
One thing I love about Byzantine gold coin is that they are more affordable than the older, and much more expensive, Roman gold aureus or Greek gold staters.
One day I hope to pick up an aureus though since I’m a total nerd for all things Roman.
Nice
Thanks!! ^_^
So much history in a tiny little coin.
Yes, a nice little piece of history!
I'm super curious what a gold solidus would have been able to purchase during the time period it was minted.
I mean I know usually people used silver & copper coinage for daily transactions but it's difficulty finding an exchange value for Byzantine coinage.
For example it's well known that 1 gold Roman aureus was worth 25 silver Roman denarii until the denarius started being heavily debased of course.
But I can't seem to find a table or chart showing how many silver/bronze coins a gold solidus was worth.
Nice piece! Ancient coins are always so cool to look at although not my area of collecting.
Young Numismatist/collector
75 Positive BST transactions buying and selling with 45 members and counting!
instagram.com/klnumismatics
We all like different things
. None of it is wrong.
I first started collecting American coins because that’s what I liked and most of my dealers only sold American coins.
But I’ve always been a huge nerd of Classical History and I Majored in it in college and when I learned I could legally buy ancient Roman & Greek coins I couldn’t resist.
Even though the solidus in my OP is Byzantine I still “technically” consider it as a part of Roman coinage since the Byzantine Empire was just what was left when the Western Roman Empire fell in 476 AD.
A clear indication of the breakdown in the monetary system of the Late Roman empire is the huge discontinuity between readily available coinage denominations. Silver had effectively disappeared from circulation, leaving nothing in between the tiny copper nummus and the gold solidus. It would be as if the US currency system had 1 cent coins and $20 notes, with nothing in between. Not entirely convenient, for anybody. It indicates a declining usage of coins for mid-value transactions, where barter was seeing a comeback.
Officially, at the time of its introduction by Diocletian, the face value of a solidus was 1000 denarii, eventually rising to 275,000 denarii - the "denarius", of course, being the long-debased money of account, no longer represented by an actual coin.
WIth the reforms of Anastasius that traditionally herald the beginning of "Byzantine" coins, the denarius was finally abandoned as the unit of account, with the new basis being the "nummus". The follis, the primary circulating bronze coin, had a face value of 40 nummi; the solidus had a face value of 6000 nummi, or the equivalent of 150 folles. The silver coin of the Byzantine period, the miliaresion, was (as can probably be guessed by the name) worth 1000 nummi, or 25 folles.
Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations"
Apparently I have been awarded one DPOTD.
I feel sorry for the original poster who was told that his ancient coin wasn't old enough to be "ancient".
Is this one old enough?
Roman Empire Antoninus Pius Aureus - "Rome rules the world"
Gold, 19.5 mm 7.26 gm
Obverse: Laureate head right - ANTONINVS AVG PIVS P P IMP II
Reverse: Antoninus wearing toga, standing left, holding globe - TR POT XIX COS IIII
Struck: AD 155-156 at Rome, Catalog: RIC 256a
The Mysterious Egyptian Magic Coin
Coins in Movies
Coins on Television
Thanks for explaining!
Wow that would be AWFUL to try to engage in commerce with only teeny tiny denominations and huge denominations.
Sometimes ya just wanna buy a flagon of ale and a loaf of bread at the local inn and even a small gold coin would be too valuable to use to pay for it so people would have to carry around giant bags of nearly worthless copper coins for daily transactions.
Well, for basic transactions like that, the copper coins would have sufficed (though "the local inn" was yet to be invented). It's the medium-scale transactions that would have suffered. Buying an amphora of olive oil, for example; a gold coin might buy three or four amphorae, which is tough luck if you only wanted one. Looks like you're buying four, then. Hope your house has enough storage space.
We don't actually have much information about the price of goods in the Byzantine period; we have Diocletian's famous Edict of Prices back in the Late Roman period, and that's about it. The Byzantines seem to have been more interested in recording their theological debates than the price of eggs. But up until the Arab conquests began, the Byzantine Empire was rich and prosperous, and many of the basic needs - such as bread - were given away free by the State.
Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations"
Apparently I have been awarded one DPOTD.
You can definitely count Byzantine as ancient, because there's no universal definition or rules on how many periods there have to be. On coin forums, there tends to be just 'ancient' and 'modern'. Where do the Middle Ages fit into that? I tend to divide coins into hammered and milled, which started to appear in the 1500s - just after the fall of the Byzantine Empire and the start of what historians call the 'modern period'.
The middle ages are what most people I know consider Medieval, which is the 3rd era you are looking for!
Honestly in my mind I just think of anything 1,000 years or more as “ancient”.
I know it’s not the correct scholarly definition of ancient but the fact is as time goes on the idea of “ancient” will change.
For example in the year 3560 AD they will probably consider 2021 to be “ancient”.
The Byzantines gave away free bread too?!
That’s something I didn’t know. I thought the Cura Annonae ended with the end of the western Roman Empire because from my knowledge only citizens living in Rome were eligible for it as a significant perk of living there.
Yes it's not that there aren't more eras (there are hundreds if you want them), it's that they often don't fit. Eras are arbitrary, and so open to interpretation. Even a historian's definition of 'ancient' is until 'about 500'.
This is because it uses the fall of the Western Roman Empire to divide ancient and medieval. It's a pretty poor cut off for much of the rest of the world. It doesn't even work in Europe, since it took 50-100 years to fall. Britain's 'medieval' should really start in 410, Rome was sacked in 410, and the last Roman Emperor was deposed in 476, although he didn't rule over anywhere anyway.
In fact, one date you might use for the end of the Western Roman Empire was when the Western imperial court in Ravenna was formally dissolved by Justinian in 554. If you choose that date, the OP's coin can be counted as ancient or medieval, since it's a coin of the very Emperor that ended the ancient era.
Easy…..a beer at the local pub! 😂
Google yielded this….
Definitely more than that 😂
I read somewhere that most peasants never had a solidus and that it was rare for them to even see one let alone have one.
It makes sense though. There is a story in the Bible that talks about a woman whose entire life saving’s is 10 denarii. Or about 10 days wages. She loses 1 of them and searches all day until she finds it at which point she rejoices with her neighbors.
Today we’d think it was silly for someone to lose say a $20 bill and upon finding it going around celebrating with our neighbors but people were much poorer back then.
I’d like to imagine an even higher value coin like a solidus would be like $1,000 but I don’t know for sure.
I know of people eating an entire week with 20 euros (~ 24 USD)
I think this demonstrates the arbitrary nature of 'eras'. They've used historic/famous events that actually didn't make much difference to people's lives at the time, particularly on a worldwide scale. Why would we use the discovery of America to divide our coin collections? We wouldn't. If you're going to pick a voyage it would be Vasco de Gama's to India in 1499 that ushered in global imperialism, but fewer people have heard of that.
It's interesting that 'Columbus discovered America' (which he didn't) but Australia was 'invaded/colonised'.
Columbus may not have discovered America but he was the first person to bring news of that discovery to the rest of the world.
I wouldn’t call Leif Ericson’s voyage to America as the discovery of it since it doesn’t mean much if you don’t tell anyone about it.
But I guess technically there will people living in America for thousands of years so I guess they discovered it.
I do not know if we should accept a chart which can not spell "Ancient".
The Mysterious Egyptian Magic Coin
Coins in Movies
Coins on Television
I always thought of stuff being ancient if it is at least 1000 years old
Same. I think the idea of “ancient” changes as time goes on. To the Ancient Greeks the Sumerian civilization was “ancient”. To the Ancient Romans the ancient Greeks were “ancient”. I think that ancient just means “X number of years in the past”.
Livy (who lived during the time of Augustus) only goes back about 750 years from his own time in Ab Urbe Condita and he’s writing about legendary figures like Romulus. I think he’d consider anything before that to be ancient times.
I don’t really think there is a scientific or historical definition. It’s not classified like the Iron Age or Stone Age. Although if you say something like “Ancient Greek” you can define that because there are periods before it (Greek Dark Ages) and periods after it.