Bus fare
TPring
Posts: 372 ✭✭✭
TPring
Posts: 372 ✭✭✭
TPring
Posts: 372 ✭✭✭
Comments
You see these kinds of news articles popping up occasionally. Sometimes it's a genuine ancient coin (as appears to be the case here), sometimes it's a tourist replica.
Most of the time, the most probable explanation for it happening is "someone's coin collection was stolen and either the thieves or the thieves' fence didn't know what they had, so used it as a bus token".
There have been examples of ancient coins getting put back into circulation after thousands of years underground, but it doesn't happen often, and not in the past century or so. During the copper coin shortage in Britain in the late 1700s, for example, any ancient Roman copper or bronze coins that might have been dug up during that time would likely have been polished up and spent, due to the lack of official coinage and abundance of privately-issued tokens. I have a couple of Roman dupondii and sestertii of old British provenance with wear patterns that can best be explained by "modern circulation".
Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations"
Apparently I have been awarded the DPOTD twice.
Wow, it took like seventy five years for this story to hit the news. The Roman coin was used in the fifties for bus fare. Talk about burying the lead! 😂
I'm BACK!!! Used to be Billet7 on the old forum.
"Ancient coin used for bus fare".
When I read that sentence, my brain went astray and I briefly wondered what kinds of buses they had in ancient times. LOL
So with a little AI assistance, I was able to explore the idea...
Collector since 1976. On the CU forums here since 2001.