Posted 04/09/2026 06:14 am
Widow's mite: I was going to post something about "yes, you can get better for cheaper", but then I went and checked a couple of reputable ancients dealers and they've all got their better Widows Mites priced at over $100 now. So I'll have to adapt my opinion to "you can get better, for not much extra money".
Islamic dirham: you've more or less paid near-bullion price for a 1400 year old coin; that's pretty good by any measure, despite this coin seeming to have been somewhat harshly cleaned.
Your Islamic coin can also be more precisely attributed, if you're interested. The mint-city is Kufa (in modern-day Iraq), and the year is "three and forty and hundred"; Year 143 in the Islamic calendar converts to AD 760, during the reign of the Abbasid caliph Mansur, who is not named on this coin; most of the Arabic inscriptions on coins at this time aside from the mint-name and date are verses from the Qu'ran.
Islamic dirham: you've more or less paid near-bullion price for a 1400 year old coin; that's pretty good by any measure, despite this coin seeming to have been somewhat harshly cleaned.
Your Islamic coin can also be more precisely attributed, if you're interested. The mint-city is Kufa (in modern-day Iraq), and the year is "three and forty and hundred"; Year 143 in the Islamic calendar converts to AD 760, during the reign of the Abbasid caliph Mansur, who is not named on this coin; most of the Arabic inscriptions on coins at this time aside from the mint-name and date are verses from the Qu'ran.
Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
