Early Dates

Litotes- so are you asking what is the oldest coin that actually has a specific date on the coin?

I assume you mean AD calendar dates written using the Western numeral system. Yes, there are "plenty" of known coin types with dates prior to 1500. They've even written a book about them, if you're keen on making this a theme.

The earliest AD date known on a coin, quoted on the cover of that book as 1234, was done in Roman numerals I believe.

swamperbob, I am perfectly aware of the fact that there exists other dates. That was why I tried to specify that these fall outside my particular field of interest. US collectors frequently collect US coins first and foremost. Brits do the same with British coins. Westerners like me focus on western dates. Nothing unusual about it, I would say. For me the digits 0123456789 in exactly this form has special interest. I have however been guilty of giving an inadequate description, leaving undesired ambiguity. I am glad you still managed to obtain the meaning, and I am grateful to Sap for the book tip.

No, and probably, once they do enough research. The 1600's edition is full of errors and omissions, so I'd rather they took their time to get all the research right the first time.


Krause would do what they've done before, and renumber the entire series for that country. Annoying, yes, but it's the only way around the problem.

Back onto the subject at hand. I never answered the OP question about my oldest AD/numeral dated coin. It's a Hungarian denar of Wladislas II, dated 1508.

As for the theoretical, I looked up Doty's "Encyclopedic Dictionary of Numismatics" under "dating systems", where it confirms the oldest AD date is 1234, written in Roman numerals on coins from Roskilde, Denmark.

The oldest use of "modern" numerals to indicate the date is given to be a coin of the Swiss canton of St Gall, in 1424. Example on CoinArchives. You can see the date figures in the top left of the obverse, at around the 10 o'clock position. If you're having trouble spotting it, I've highlighted it here:

The "4"s are somewhat archaically-shaped, and very similar to an upside-down "Indian 4", but it's still recognisable as "1424".