Results tagged “Coins”

Some of the earliest coins that are coins, rather then just weighted chunks of metal, are the late 7th century Lydian staters.  These were struck in electrum, an alloy of gold and silver, which has a pale-yellow color.  Recently the Israel Museum in Jerusalem had an exhibit of a wide selection of these, with quite an impressive online catalog.  They also published a catalogue, White Gold: Revealing the World's Earliest Coins, bits available online.

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The Muesum of Fine Arts (MFA) in Boston has a phenomonal collection of ancient coins, probably one of the top 3 collections in a public institution in the US. Until a week ago it suffered from an absolutely horrible display, 2 small cases in a dark side of one of the ancient Greek galleries, ill labeled and with no way of seeing the reverse of coins, unless they happened to own two of the same coin, and decided to show both. This was particularly galling for such coins as this Dekadrachm of Syracuse, called the Demareteion (thought to have been minted a bit after 480 BCE), which are the finest specimens of their type.

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This sorry state of affairs has finally been rectified with the opening of the Michael C. Ruettgers Gallery for Ancient Coins on September 25, 2012. Along with the donation, which must have been pretty hefty, to create the gallery, Mr. Ruettgers donated 14 rare ancient Roman gold pieces, including Aureus with the bust of Aelius Verus from 137 CE (below).

The new gallery will initially be displaying about 500 coins from the museum's collection of about 7500. Just because, here's a second Syracusian Dekadrachm from their collection, this one about 60 years later then the Demareteion, about 415 BCE, and signed by the engraver Euainetos.

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Now with actual Indians!  The rights to the name The East India Company were bought up by Sanjiv Mehta, an Indian businessman, in 2005 and it is once again selling fine foods in England.  One of the more unusual things that comes with the name is the right to mint coinage, and they have restarted the minting of the Mohur, a gold coin whose name means "seal" and was used throughout the sub-continent.  In this case it's 11.66 grams of 22K gold, about 26mm in diameter.  The large emblem of the EIC is on one side and a lion before a palm tree on the other, a motif first seen on the first gold Mohur minted in 1835.



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Yes the 2010 award is given at the beginning of 2012, they take an entire year to look over the coins that were issued with 2010 dates. Anyway, the final award "Coin of the Year" has been awarded to an Israeli 2 Sheqalim (technically New Sheqalim, but nobody uses that term) depicting Jonah in the Whale.

On heads there's all the usual stuff, date, country, denomination as well as the text "Jonah in the belly of the fish (Jonah 2:1)" in Hebrew, Arabic and English. At the bottom is a small figure of Jonah in prayer. On the back Jonah is shown insconced in the, he is a negative space in the large frosted plateau of the fish.

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This window, originally in the Schaffhausen mint, gives a good bit of insight into the process of minting coins in 16th C Switzerland.  The related article gives a complete explaination of each pane, which covers minting from making and weighing the planchets through post-strike cleaning and treatments.  The window is currently held by the Berlin Münzkabinetts.

This coin has been the subject of much debate as to its authenticity.  Its provenience can be traced back to the 1930s or there about:

- Represented by plaster casts from the 1930s at the BM and ANS
- Published in: H. A. Cahn, "Analyse et interprétation du style," Congrès international de numismatique Paris 6-11 juillet 1953 II. Actes (Paris, 1953) (location unknown between 1930s and 1953)
- In the Biaggi Collection from around that time until Biaggi's death in the 1970s.

Michael Crawford, a noted expert on coins of Republican Rome, declared it a fake, based on examination of the casts, in the 1974 edition of Roman Republican Coinage.  He has since reversed his position based on seeing the actual piece.

Now an excerpt from yesterday's BM press release:

Brutus chose to commemorate Caesar's murder through the issue of coinage, which carried his portrait, the date (EID MAR), as well as images of assassins daggers and a "pileus" or freedman's cap, symbolic of Rome's escape from tyranny. It was produced in 43-42 BC at the mobile mint of Brutus and his fellow conspirators, who had by this time fled Rome for Greece. Unusually the coin's significance was recognised in antiquity and it was described by Cassius Dio in the second century AD: "

Brutus stamped upon the coins which were being minted his own likeness and a cap and two daggers, indicating by this and by the inscription that he and Cassius had liberated the fatherland."
Cassius Dio (47.25.1)

Silver coins (denarii) of this type, issued by Brutus after he and his fellow conspirators were driven from Rome, are unusual enough with around sixty examples known. Gold coins (aurei) of this type are extraordinarily rare with only two known. This coin, which is owned by a private collector, Michael Winckless, has been generously lent to the British Museum on a long-term basis and will go on display in the Museum's Roman Empire gallery (Room 70) from the "Ides" of March.
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