How Far Back Can We Go? Fifth Edition! Ended At 1461 Waiting On 1460 C. E. (A. H. 864)

I have, but I keep finding different considerations.

TL/DR is that Islamic, Arab-Sassanian, and regular Sassanian coinage should, in principle, get us up to the late 490s AD, though I hadn't exhaustively checked; and from roughly 350 AD on it's a straight road to something like 3rd century BC, via Bosporan, Seleukid, Ptolemaic, Parthian, and Western Kshatrapa coins (in no particular order), as well as numerous single-year types.

The 350-500 range is a big black box, though; there are very few dated coins in that range, possibly even fewer single-year types, and one of the biggest participants (Gupta drachms) is very unreliable because the dates are off flan far more often than not (to the extent where it can be almost impossible to tell whether a date had not been minted, or just doesn't happen to have been attested yet; it doesn't help that most of the easily findable sources for known attested dates are from the 19th century, so I wouldn't know about any metal detecting finds).

My current best guess is 492 AD as the most recent unfillable year, though it depends on some assumptions about late Gupta coins that I was not very sure of.

1486 Guildiner, Sigismund, Austria although I've also heard it called The Holy Roman Empire


Provenance:bought from Spink & Son, fixed price, ca. 1998.

I've also bid on the 1484 1/2 guildiner and expect to have one in about 3-5 years.

Incidentally I just had the 1486 out as I took a group of 12 coins to show someone I met recently who was also "a coin collector". I just returned it back to the SD Box but can get a weight with my Ohaus balance and eventually a surface composition as this pawn shop guy has an XRF.

I do a lot of displays, talks to high school groups, and occasionally BSA merit badge counselor for coin collecting. The 1486 is always impressive to show to people or other collectors & I get comments like "No way, it can't be that old".

thanks to january1may for alerting me to this thread

Spectacular coin @gallienus! Glad to see you.

Indeed very very nice guildiner!
Sigismund the rich married 3 times. He was 56 and dementing when he married the sixteen year old and naughty Catherine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathe...atharina.jpg

Duchy of Brabant, regency of Philip the Fair, undated double patard minted in Antwerp April 12 to December 24, 1485, deWitte 552.
Now I am out until 1479. During our recent pause, I did some research in deWitte on years before 1474 (earliest dated coin) when Brabant had an undated coin minted within a calendar year. For the 1400s, I only came up with a double mite minted in 1458, a pieter d'argent minted in 1431, and a dubbel groot minted in 1409. I can keep my eye out for these in case a future How Far Back thread ever gets to these years.

Likewise, after the 1470s, I have 1384, 1380, 1339 and 1338 (two!). Thank you for the reminder that I can also look for issues minted for less than 12 months.

Apparently the mint records in the Low Countries were well preserved over many centuries, which is a miracle given the many years of warfare in the 16th and 17th centuries.

I'm rapidly running out of coins for this thread --- just 1482, 1478, 1477, 1476, 1475, (1473 still hasn't arrived), 1470, and 1465.

After that, there's big gaps until 1426 and 733, etc.