Which Ancient / Medieval Coins Have The Most Historical Significance In Your Collection And Why?

This is indeed a great topic. History is an awesome thing, but the deeper, more personal meaning to the steward-collector is always a story worth hearing. All of which makes Bob's contribution so fascinating. The bowl for instance: very personal object, created for daily use. Just incredible!

There is something personally motivating about all of the coins in my collection, but speaking as an artist, my fascination with Hadrian as a patron of the arts spurred my appreciation of several of my coin acquisitions. There is, however, one coin in particular with a connection to an ancient event. A happening that has always stirred a deep interest within me.

This dupondius of Titus is that special piece. Connecting me with the eruption of Vesuvius and the subsequent burial of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Even the molten look of the coin speaks to me of that ancient tragedy. Humbling!

My avatar coin.
They were the World's first example of a large scale circulating gold currency used for large trading payments, and for a short time, the preferred form of wealth storage.

Over the last 2,300 years almost all of them were melted and recycled to make other current coins, (most during the period of the Roman Empire), and so they are somewhat scarce today.

Nevertheless, any collector of ancient coins can have an example, if they are prepared to pay for it.

All nice examples being posted. Thanks. It's fun learning about history. I also have coins of Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Augustus, Tiberius, Herod the Great, Pontius Pilate etc. but....

Here's my Claudius asserion with Libertas.

Here's my North Africa Late Roman oil lamp with reverse chi-rho. The maker got it turned around. It has been burned, I assume in a fire, 14.3cm. I have Roman coins with the Christian chi-rho from Constantine I into Byzantine era. The gradual shift from worshiping ancient gods and Caesar to Christianity is interesting, sometimes bloody and cruel.

They have found a good number of coins and jewelry in excavations at Pompeii.

Your first question is easy to answer. It does indeed bear that inscription: "FEL TEMP REPARATIO", abbreviated for the Latin "Felicium Temporum Reparatio", or "happy times restored". Or perhaps more colloquially, "happy days are here again".

Your second question is harder to answer. We don't even know what names the ancient Romans gave to these bronze coins; inflation was continuing at a rapid pace as the Roman Empire contracted - in the exact opposite way to what the propaganda message of the reverse of this coin implied was happening - and if anybody had bothered to write down details like the names and face values of these coins, such records have not survived. So it can be difficult to discern what the intended face values of coins from this time period were supposed to be. But the ancients didn't have the modern tendency to produce coins that were literally worthless, like modern US pennies or even dimes; even the smallest ancient coin would have been able to buy you something - a loaf of cheap bread, or enough raw wheat to feed a whole family for a day. So in terms of dollar-equivalent buying power, it's probably best to think of it as somewhere around equivalent to a $1 to $5 coin.

But the economy of the time was becoming de-monetized; in circulation, you'd have found these coins, and you'd have found gold coins, and pretty much nothing in between, as silver had essentially disappeared from circulation; you'd have needed a thousand or so of the copper coins to equate to one gold coin (again, we don't really know the exchange rates for certain). So a lot of basic day-to-day trading had reverted to being done by barter, rather than money.

OK, next up: the Habbarid Emirate of Sind.

One of the last places the Islamic Caliphate expanded into what is now south-eastern Pakistan. This far remote from central control, the governors of SInd went... rogue. IN 854, they proclaimed themselves Emirs and, although still nominally recognizing the Caliph, they ruled as a de-facto independent state. They converted from Sunni Islam to the heretical Ismaili sect, and switched their allegiance to the Fatimid caliph of Egypt.

In 1026, the orthodox Sunni Ghaznavids invaded and conquered Sind, and there was a purge. The Ismailis were wiped out from the region. If any records from the Habbarid Dynasty were ever made (and we can assume such records probably did once exist, as Islamic rulers are normally pretty good at keeping records about themselves), the Ghaznavids did a thorough job of obliterating them. The coins are all we know of their names, making the coins critical for obtaining understanding from this time period in Pakistan's history.

I own two Sind coins, one in the name of a "Mohammed" and one in the name of an "Ali", but exactly who these rulers were, can now only be conjectured about. Our best guess is that "Ali" was "Mohammed"'s son and successor and they ruled in the mid-900s AD, but if there were actually two Habbarid rulers named "Mohammed" or "Ali" then that throws out the entire hypothesized chronology. Anyway, here's my "Mohammed" coin:


And here's my "Ali" coin:


They both have the appearance of "regular" Umayyad or Abbasid dirhams, but they're tiny - less than half the size and weight.

Firstly, what an excellent idea for a thread! An interest in history is one of my main motivations for collecting coins, so finding the history behind particular coins is something I spend a lot of time researching.

Secondly, what great coins that have already been presented here! I will try to find something that matches but has not yet showed up.

But for now, it is @Yokozuna's post and question that occupies my mind:


Prices and the value of money in 4th century Rome are far from clear. What is known is that there was hyperinflation, millions of % if counting in denarius communis (the good old silver denarius, a day's pay for a legionary in the 2nd century AD, which in the 4th century was purely a money of account - if even that). A number of monetary reforms repeatedly gave new values to the bronze nummi, the smallest coins, like the one you have. Still, they were not worth much, and it was common to pack them in sealed bags of 100 or more for daily transactions (a bag like that was called a follis).

In the following, I base my calculations on Harl's "Coinage in the Roman Economy." It will still be rather speculative, given how little we actually know for sure about prices during the period in question. But it can give an idea, and it is an interesting exercise if nothing else, to try to calculate the price of a "calidum canis" in Rome in 357 AD.

I have no source for what the price of a hot dog would be, but let's take something for which there is data: In the mid 4th century, a normal price for a modius (8.6 liter or 1 peck) of wheat was 1/30 of a solidus (a 4.5 gram gold coin). The rate of exchange between the solidus and the nummi in the late 350s was around 3,000. So: 1 peck of wheat = 100 nummi.

Now let's, quite speculatively I admit, say that the price relation between hot dogs and wheat was the same as today. The price of wheat varies quite a bit, but around 2 $/peck seems reasonable. A hot dog is about 4 $ (I guess that varies too, but let's not get too picky, we're doing this for the fun of it!). So, there we go: 1 hot dog/calidum canis = 200 nummi, or two bags of 100 coins, please .

I will post a coin in this thread too, I promise . I just have to decide which one ...

Great additions.