Early Electrum Coinage Symposium

The American Numismatic Society recently hosted an Early Electrum Coinage Symposium. I had been unaware of the revolution that is happening in this important field. I had expected to learn about minor advances in the field, building upon what I thought I knew. Instead we learned that no one is certain if the electrum in the earliest Greek coins was found naturally or manufactured. We learned the minting techniques for early electrum are a mystery. We also developed a better understanding of our ignorance of the purpose and issue date of early coinage.

I came out of the conference much less informed than I entered. I loved it!

100 years ago early coinage was well understood. Two ancient authors, Herodotus and Xenophanes of Colophon, wrote that the ancient Lydians were the first to strike coins in gold and silver. Electrum is “a natural compound of gold and silver, collected at Sardes from the washings of the little mountain torrent Pactolus”. Everyone knew the earliest coins were struck from lumps of electrum first on a rough surface using hammers and rough punches. This process naturally lead to cutting images such as lions and deer upon anvils allowing a picture to appear on the front of the coin. These early coins were buried in the well-excavated foundation of the temple of Ephesus allowing them to be clearly dated. These primitive coins inspired a later and better system of gold and silver coinage.

The consensus view turns out to be mostly wrong. The Pactolus produces something more like gold than electrum. The anvil and punch technique couldn't have worked the way we thought. The gifts buried at the temple of Artemis weren't typical temple foundation objects. We aren't certain what happened in the refinery at Sardes. The electrum coins linked to certain wars probably need to be placed elsewhere.

The material presented at last months symposium in New York build upon the results of another conference presented last year in Jerusalem. A lot of it was multidisciplinary, drawing experts in mining and refining. I look forward to the proceedings of the Jerusalem White Gold conference.

Neutrino scientists and archeologists both want ancient Roman lead artifacts

Gerard LeBlond reports on the use of ancient lead for a new purpose.

A circulated brockage from Nepal

As a child error coins fascinated me. I had off-center cents and 5 cent pieces and a tattered copy of Alan Herbert's 1974 book The Official Guide to Mint Errors. The book had an entire chapter on brockages. I had never seen a brockage.

Brick-and-mortar coin shops didn't have brockages, at least not in Michigan. Even at a really big coin show it was rare to see one.

When I started collecting ancient coins I was surprised to discover ancient brockages are not exceedingly rare. Sixty-eight ancient examples are offered for sale right now on an ancient coin sale web site, as compared to a single modern brockage. (The site has twice as many total ancient coins as modern coins, so a better comparison would be 68:2.)

Would ancient users of coins even notice anything unusual when spending a brockage? It seems hard not to notice a brockage, yet we don't see any evidence that ancient brockages were put aside. They appear alongside regular coins in hoards.

I was surprised to find a modern, circulated brockage recently at a coin show. Even more surprising, it wasn't in a fancy holder. It was in a junk box among similar coins from the region. This coin, a Nepalese one paisa from 1947, somehow managed to circulate in Nepal during the 20th century. It then made its way to the United States and a dealer's try without anyone noticing anything unusual. This suggests that brockages do not "jump out" to the average user or even to a casual coin dealer. Perhaps it really takes a trained eye to "see" brockages?

I would be curious to know of other modern circulated brockages. Does anyone collect them?

Interesting thoughts on discouraging the ivory trade

Interesting thoughts on discouraging the ivory trade from an influential economist.

New eBay coin category

Virtual Currency is a new eBay category I haven't seen before. Not many listings yet.

Kshs

Design firm ARK has proposed a new symbol for the Kenyan Shilling.

I have been too busy with other things to post lately. Hope everyone is doing fine. In the comments section let me know what other numismatic blogs are worth reading.

Bitcoin mining machine

I haven't had much to write about for the past couple of months. I did read an article on Bitcoin mining. Highly recommended for techies. The article covers the mathematical bitcoins, not the physical Bitcoins that can be used to carry them.

3D Gadhaiya Paisa

As before, although the image looks OK without glasses you really want to use red/cyan 3D glasses to see this coin.

This enigmatic coinage was struck in India, 800-1300 AD. It's usually called “Gadhaiya Paisa”. I realize I know almost nothing about Indian coinage during this time. I have Michael Mitchiner's Indo-Greek and Indo-Scythian Coinage, covering coins up to the 4th century, but the rest of Indian coinage is a mystery to me until the British Raj period.

Is there a good book to get started with the mysterious pre-Islamic coins of India?

3d Menander

I have been taking 3D scans of a few favorite coins. The image is of a drachm of Menander. Red/cyan glasses should be worn to see the image properly.

Last month I posted a bronze coin scanned this way and got no comments. I would be curious to know if any of my readers have tried looking at these images with 3d glasses. I have a bunch more scans, but I'm not going to post them if no one has the glasses.

Forgery workshop uncovered in Italy (2004)

FORVM user Taras has posted a description of two 2004 seizures of counterfeit ancient coins and forgers dies in Italy. I was surprised the seizures included 870 counterfeit dies but only 371 fake coins. The post is worth reading for Taras' speculation on this workshop's methods.

Lost World of the Golden King

Frank Holt, Lost World of the Golden King: In Search of Ancient Afghanistan (2012, 343 pages)

It's good! Holt retraces the development of Baktrian numismatics from the tetradrachm of Eukratides published in 1738 by Theophilus Siegfried Bayer to the present day. Holt's narrative is not a dry scholarly recap; he includes many stories including new research about the arrival of Eukratides' giant ancient coin on the European market.

This is a good approach. So little is known about ancient Baktria that there is no real story to tell. The second major idea of Lost World is a reminder of how much that we think we know about Hellenistic Baktria is now-discredited speculation. Holt's book will hopefully serve as a great "reboot" for the field of Baktrian studies.

Holt is critical of numismatic scholarship for continuing to focus the role coins play to uncover the ancient kings and battles. He believes that numismatics should move on, devising ways to deduce facts about ancient lifestyles. Statistical techniques are used to show technical errors on coins imply the coiners of ancient Ai Khanoum were probably stressed out as their civilization was dying.

The professor's critique of numismatic scholarship has some merit but he seems to paint numismatics with a single brush. So much of coin studies are done by or for collectors; it seems unfair to criticize the entire field for continuing to focus on kings.

Career academics probably do not need Holt's insights to revitalize the study of coins but perhaps collectors can consider forming interesting collections around topics other than lists of kings. People are starting to collect overstrikes. I know one advanced collector who has moved on to collecting coins made into tools and decorations in antiquity.

Recommended. Lost World of the Golden King: In Search of Ancient Afghanistan (Hellenistic Culture and Society)

Pan from Pantikapaion

To view this 4th or 3rd century BC head of Pan properly red/bluegreen 3D glasses should be used. Click to view at full resolution.

This image was created using two scans on a flatbed scanner and Photoshop. Gimp can also be used. This is my first attempt at Anaglyph 3D coin photography. For the technique I credit Gerald Marks. Yesterday I attended a workshop conducted by Professor Marks at Observatory in Brooklyn.

Valcambi, a Swiss refinery, has an interesting new concept in gold bullion and in coinage.

They are marketing a CombiBar, a credit-card sized gold ingot that can easily be broken into 1g pieces to make change.

Teaming up with the Cook Islands, they have produced two varieties of CombiCoin, one that breaks into pure silver 1g coins denominated as Cook Island dimes, another that breaks into 10g pieces. The silver bars can be purchased for about $150.

Two more BMC Greek titles online

Sir George Hill's 1910 Catalogue of the Greek coins of Phoenicia and 1914 Catalogue of the Greek coins of Palestine are both available online in a searchable format through HathiTrust Digital Library. They can also be purchased on Amazon, in paperback replica format, for about $40 each.

Cleaning an ancient Roman coin with a steel scalpel

I had never seen scalpel cleaning. I was surprised by the uniform shortness of the blade strokes. The video is ten minutes long. Two minutes in they speed up the process 5x. At five minutes in they go back a montages of different coins.

Catalogue of the Greek Coins of Lycaonia, Isauria, and Cilicia

George Hill's 1900 Catalogue of the Greek Coins of Lycaonia, Isauria, and Cilicia is finally available for download at Google Books. It can also be printed on demand, for as little as $9.92. The plates seem much better in quality on the PDF than Google's web site, although on both the plates are cropped at the top and bottom.

Istros auction tomorrow

A major collection of the coins of Istros will be auctioned tomorrow in Switzerland by new firm First Auctions. There are also extensive Celtic lots. The coins are listed on Sixbid in addition to the vendor's own site. The vendor's site is terrible - no search and if you log in the images become unavailable.

Children's exhibit at Arizona Museum for Youth

An excellent museum exhibit on money and banking for young children is showing at the Arizona Museum for Youth in Mesa Arizona. The web site gives few details but my four-year-old loved it. The exhibit combines some wall art, including an improved bill by James Charles (not the Yoda one shown above though) with activities for children such as a glow-in-the-dark bank and designing paper currency with ink stamping. The exhibit runs through January 20th. There are special Saturday events but we just went on a regular museum day.

Countemporary Counterfeits Today

The Bichester Advertiser is reporting (no byline) on a counterfeit coin factory discovered by police in an active snooker hall.

Prosecuting, Colin McGregor alleged: “The defendant has spent in excess of £3,000 in order to create what is described as an ‘illicit mint’.” ... About 2,000 fake £1 coins were recovered, the court was told. Specialist officers also found a large amount of metal, as well as notepads allegedly with “stage by stage” instructions and diagrams showing how to make fake coins.

We rarely think about what happens to modern counterfeits after they are seized. One man had an idea but his dream was denied by the UK's Royal Mint. Stephanie Cureton reports for the Wirral Globe that

Plans to build a sculpture made entirely out of fake coins used at Merseyside’s tunnel booths have been scrapped. Merseytravel asked the Royal Mint for their approval to commission a special piece of art made out of counterfeit £1 coins. ... Councillor Steve Foulkes, who is part of the committee, had said he was “sceptical” about the prospect of such a piece of art.

Commenting on the newspaper's web site, a user identified only as Spiffy opined “no Turner prize for us.”

Obol (2012)

There is a raft filled with pennies in the East River. I didn't have my camera with me and can't find a thumbnail with usage rights to illustrate this post. There is a good photo of the thing on Flickr. It's by Jessica Feldman. She discusses it on her web site. It will be up until March 31, 2013.