OK...who's got the OLDEST coin?

XpipedreamR

Mine is 44-42 BC.

YC

My oldest coin is 1700s.

spoon

<< <i>OK...who's got the OLDEST coin? >>

I think Weiss does now

My oldest is a Nabataean bronze, which I know absolutely nothing about to include its age

Aethelred

Mine is around 200 BC, can't beat Weiss!

wybrit

Mine is only as old as ajaan.

Aethelred

<< <i>Mine is only as old as ajaan. >>



That is quite an only!

Cladiator

Mine is 150ish BC, nothing compared to Weiss's

hyperizer

I've got a nice Miletos 1/12 Stater. Attribution says "Before 478 BC"!

Weiss

That's the rub: it depends on what your definition of a coin is. There are several dawn of coinage examples that predate mine. Harlan Berk has this example of an electrum Phonecian 1/6th stater (7th Century BC) weighing about 2 grams, in his current buy or bid sale for $1200:


It is possible that it predates mine by a couple decades. Don't bother looking for the device or image on it, though. It's just some striations. Scholars even doubt if they were issued (for lack of a better word) by any kind of "authority", or if they were the work of independent traders or religious bodies. It seems unlikely that they were used in any kind of uniform, day-to-day trade.

So is it a "coin"?

I don't think so. It's closer to a coin than a gold bracelet or string of wampum is. But it doesn't really meet even the loosest definition of a "coin". Perhaps a more recent analogy would be the ingots issued by private assayers (Moffat & Co, F.D. Kohler, etc) in the early days of the California gold rush. Instead of having to weigh and re-weigh nuggets or gold dust in every transaction, they cast crude ingots, then weighed them once and stamped an approximate value in them. They are interesting historically. Collected and studied by specialists. But not really considered part of our coinage.

For that matter, the legitimacy of my new Lydian trite (610-565 BC) as a coin is still open to debate:


There are virtually no fractional examples extant--they're essentially one denomination. They were circulated widely, though even they don't seem to have been used in trade the way we'd think of money being used today. But there is little doubt that they were coined by the king (likely Alyattes). They are uniform in weight to the hundredth of a gram. And 2,500 years later, we'd still recognize a royal symbol or crest as an appropriate device to use on a coin.

Which is why my first early, early coin was the siglos in my icon. It came immediately after the Alyattes trite during the reign of Alyattes' son Croesus (565-546 BC). Croesus almost certainly had these coined as a function of his government. He also prohibited the coining of electrum (the alloy of gold and silver) in favor of pure gold and pure silver coins. And he established fractional denominations and a set ratio of silver to gold. Plus they did appear to be used in trade:



So, which is the oldest "coin"?

1jester

Thanks for the fascinating recap, Weiss!

theboz11

My oldest

notlogical

I have a Widow's Mite

AuldFartte

<< <i>I have a Widow's Mite >>



Same here ... 113 to 76 B.C. I think Weiss wins this time

MyWorldCoinTypeSet

1897 ... what do I win???

BigAlan

Ptolemy II 283-246 BC

PuddlePirate

Culture Limit?
Several Silver Roman Republics circa 150-100 BC
Carthage 2 pcs 100-75 BC
Greeks - Cheronessos Lion hemi-obol 450BC, a Turtle and an owl both circa 550BC.
Byzantines 900- 1100AD
Golden Horde silver and bronze 750-1300AD,
Russia 1760's 5 Kopek, some Russian silver wire money 1750's?
and a few odds and ends I haven't even figured out yet. I really need to take the time to crop a couple of pictures and put them up. I'm not counting any Roman Imperials because the republic coinage predates them.

sumnom

The oldest I have is Dang Dynasty, about 7th century AD. I am not sure it is real though. I recently lost an auction on a nice Sui dynasty coin from the 4th century AD. But who wants to know about coins I almost had but didn't?

ajaan

Mine is an Alex the Great from c. 330 BC.

cosmicdebris

<< <i>I have a Widow's Mite >>



Me 3