28 Weeks: 28 Centuries Of Coins

I see no problem with that

I am giving up on having these in hand by Friday, so I will resort to seller pics as they make their way via snail mail from India:

India, Gujarat kingdoms
8th century or thereabouts.

Early type, blurring the line between imitative Indo-Sassanian and Gadhaiya Paisa, retaining the distant memory of the original Persian style, while becoming recognizably Indian.



Intermediate form, retaining some of the original elements, but fully reduced to dots. A true Gadhaiya Paisa.

Stunning coin pepactonius! I will try to post some other 7th Century coins in the next couple of days.

This might be my only coin for this century.

China, Tang dynasty
Li Yuan 618-626



These were the first coins to depart from the "Wu zhu" design which had been in use in China for nearly 700 years. Despite his short reign, his name was used on most Tang dynasty coins for the better part of 300 years.

Thanks. What's interesting about this coin is that it's between the US $2.50 and $3.00 gold coins in weight. In AU condition, it's cheaper than an AU example of the $2.50 that I posted to the 7070 thread would be, and a whole lot cheaper than a $3.00.

Starting up the 6th Century now. Here is a tiny (9 mm) nummus from the Vandals minted between 523 and 530 AD. The attribution is Wroth 9 and Grierson 1.24. The portrait on the obv is King Hilderich. Here is the thread on CCF where our experts identified it for me:

Here's the grandfather of the Gadhaiya Paisa posted at the top of this page.

Sassanid Empire (modern day middle east)
AR Drachm of Khusro I
531-579





The Sassanian Empire was always Rome's antagonist to the East, but after the fall of the Western portion at the hands of the Germanic kingdoms, it became a mad scramble between the Sassanians and the Byzantines to assert dominance over the great political void in Rome's former provinces. Despite some initial success, the Sassanids eventually were beaten back and completely overthrown by the Muslims in the aftermath of a very exhausting territorial war fought between the two powers.

These coins were ultimately favored in the East as "good money" over Byzantine types, leading to a series of imitations that would ultimately become the Gadhaiya Paisa. These served as the model for the later Arabic dirhams that would become the major currency of the Islamic golden age.