When will us coins be considered ancients
HalfDime
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US coins will not be considered "ancient" in the numismatic sense for several millennia. The term ancient coins typically refers to coins minted before approximately 500 CE (Common Era) or the fall of the Western Roman Empire. This classification includes coins from civilizations like Greece, Rome, and Persia, with examples dating as late as the 5th century CE.
Key distinctions for ancient vs. modern coins:
Timeframe: Ancient coins predate 500 CE, while modern coins (including all US coinage since 1793) fall into later categories like medieval, early modern, or contemporary.
Cultural context: Ancient coins are tied to pre-medieval societies, while US coins reflect post-18th-century design and minting practices.
Future classification:
If current scholarly definitions remain unchanged, US coins would only enter the "ancient" category around the year 4500 CE – roughly 2,500 years from now. However, terminology may evolve with new archaeological or historical frameworks.
For reference, the oldest US coins (e.g., 1793 Flowing Hair Cent) are classified as early federal period or colonial-era numismatics, not ancient.
The Mercury Dime (minted 1916–1945) most closely resembles ancient coin designs, particularly drawing inspiration from classical Roman iconography. Its obverse features a profile of Liberty wearing a winged Phrygian cap, evoking the Roman god Mercury. This design element mirrors the artistic conventions of ancient Roman coins, which often depicted deities in profile with symbolic headwear.
Other US coins like the Buffalo Nickel (Native American motifs) and Lincoln Penny (presidential portraiture) lack direct ancient stylistic ties, focusing instead on American symbolism.
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No worries, we are not ancient for another 2500 years.
Comments
I don't see a time that US coins will ever be considered ancient, although that term is flexible not much after 500AD is really thought of as ancient.
The pieces of 8 coins, the 8 reales are sort of considered ancient. The colonial coins are almost already ancient in my opinion too.
Mr_Spud
Never.
In The Year 2525.
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Don
When the people looking at them live in civic, social, and technological arrangements that bear very little resemblance to our own.
If man is still alive.................
Mike
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One definition of ancient is anything before the fall of the western Roman Empire in 476 AD.
Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.
"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value---zero."----Voltaire
"Everything you say should be true, but not everything true should be said."----Voltaire
They say coins before 1500 go with the ancients. If the same pattern holds, maybe 2525, but the trouble is they are all machine made. The ancients were hammer strikes so perhaps “never” is the answer.
My nephew would say now.
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The division of historical time into "ancient", "mediaeval" and "modern" began with the Renaissance in the 1400s - which considered themselves "modern", and which also considered the entire interval between the ancient and modern worlds to be bad, and thus also known as the "dark age".
"Ancient" is of course derived from a French word for "old". But in an archaeological and thus numismatic context, "ancient" has a fairly fixed and limited meaning: events prior tot he fall of the Western Roman Empire in AD 476. Numismatists sometimes stretch the definition to AD 498, when Eastern Roman Emperor Anastasius I instituted a coinage reform that saw the end of "Roman" coins and beginning of "Byzantine" coins (by modern definitions), and AD 498 can readily be rounded up to AD 500. Thus, at the latest, the "ancient period" extends up to AD 500.
There are some in the numismatic community who would extend the definition forwards, in some circumstances. Many collectors consider Byzantine coins to be "ancient" rather than "mediaeval", for example, while others consider the technical aspects to be more determinative of classification, and consider any coin that was hammer-struck rather than machine-struck to be "ancient" - which would mean there are numerous Indian and Islamic coins from the mid-20th century that are "ancient" by this definition.
Of course, the whole ancient/mediaeval/modern division of history really only applies to European-centric history, as the rest of the world - notably China, India, and the Islamic world - did not suffer the same millennium-long "dark age" that Europe did.
Future historians are of course free to redefine terminology as they see fit, and there's certainly nothing we now can do to stop that from happening, but historians are as a rule a conservative bunch, and tend not to change things around and invent new words just for funsies. So I strongly suspect that any historical classification that would lump Ancient Rome and Modern America together in the same time period, would wave to wait until after some other catastrophic interruption in historical progress - a New Dark Age - had already taken place. Even then, it might need several New Dark Ages and probably the colonizing of other star systems before the distinction between Rome and America becomes blurred.
If anyone wants to read some neat science-fiction about an antiquities dealer living in such a universe (think Indiana-Jones-in-space), I can recommend the Alex Benedict series of novels by Jack McDevitt. In Alex Benedict's universe, 9,600 years from now, only two coins are known to have survived from before the 24th century: an ancient Roman denarius of Nero, and an American quarter from the 1990s.
Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations"
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Certainly not in my lifetime.
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i was going to say i'm in my 50s and feel ancient already
we're going to run out of non-renewable energy soon. those people will be trying to figure out how to keep their survival books clean and readable
When US Coins considered Ancients? -Not worth worrying about - we will be long gone.
It would be at some point in time current nations as we now know them have not existed for some long period of time. Possible thousands of years. It would be a world post something like The Last of US (tv show). Another example would be a post pole shift world where entire continents re-arranged. Or a future where humanity occupied hundreds of worlds. Take a look at the utube show where a UFO alien said they evolved from what was left of us lol.
A future conversation Altaira laughing “can you imagine people paying more for a certain date when there were millions of these same coins but dated differently.” Says Jondun “And they would nitpick about what holder they were in.” (Background laughter).
After the apocalypse and next dark ages.
Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value. Zero. Voltaire. Ebay coinbowlllc
A car is considered by many to be an "antique" if it is 25 years old. But I don't think that the term "ancient" as applied to coins has the same mechanism to continually include more coins as time passes.
I suspect that ancient coins will always refer to coins from whatever specific era is recognized now. I would expect that centuries or millenia from now there will be another term for coins from our era.
I'm in my 30s and agree with you... that you're ancient
Long after I am dead. I would guess sometime after 4000 A.D..
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