Medieval Coin Collectors: How'd You Get Started?

Coins are a continuum, and know nothing of these artificial lines in the history books that divide history into periods. Nobody in late ancient times ever sat down and said "Okay, we're gonna start making our coins mediaevally now". It happened slowly and gradually.

I collect coins. All of them, ancient through to modern. Mediaeval coins are just a subset of the broader "coins" category.

That being said, I do put them into a separate album.

I think the first mediaeval coin in my collection was one of those awful-looking little silver denars from Lucca; a mail-order dealer I subscribed to back in the early 1980s had a bulk lot of them for sale. Next would have been a couple of English hammered pennies in the early 1990s.

Well-framed, and great idea for a thread!

I started collecting with Whitman folders as an elementary school kid, and my dad's pouch of foreign coins from his WWII deployment. I also liked geography and history as a kid.
But that doesn't get me to medeival.

A couple of things happened once I was a mid-teen with a bit of money from a part-time job to spend on coins. In those days, the New York Times still had a page or two on stamps and coins in their Arts and Leisure section, and some ads. Like Sap, I stuck ten bucks in an envelope for a 13th century hammered English penny, and was delighted by what I got (a far cry from what came in the mail from Littleton and a couple of other mail order places whose names I've forgotten).
Not long after, my older brother spent a summer as a student in Spain, and brought me back some coins from the Sunday stamp & coin market in the Plaza Major: 17th century Spanish, and one old Moroccan dirhem.
I read Barabara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror, which I think was a pretty big hit in the U.S. at the time, and helped introduce a lot of us to the medieval world.

In mid mid-20s, I spent a school year working at a lab in Lorraine, with some extracurricular travel to see family in Poland. I think the exposure to such older cultures pretty much sealed the deal, though I didn't have much extra cash for coins, not least because we were planning our wedding for the following spring.

What finally triggered more substantial acquisition of medievals was a job posting to Brussels in my mid-40s and getting introduced to Elsen. The first auction I participated in I was accompanied by my 10 year old son, and I think his excitement and enthusiasm was also a factor (I remember picking up a 14th century Hungarian florin, a pair of 15th century Brabant coins, and a nice early 16th c Sigismund I Polish groat).
I wound up starting a "OFER" (One From Every Reign) collection of the three places I've mentioned: Duchy of Lorraine, Kingdom of Poland, and Duchy of Brabant. What these places have in common is that their coinage started solidly in the medieval era (practically speaking during the 12th c. for each), and ended in the 18th c. (1736, 1795 and 1715 respectively). Over time, that morphed into assembling an OFEY across those themes and one more theme that coalesced more recently, coins with images of saints.

I doubt I will expand to ancients, but I picked up my first Byzantine less than 3 years ago, and am now up to 7, so who knows?

I don't particularly collect medieval coins, but do have some and find them interesting as there are so many varieties.

I got interested in medieval hammered through metal detecting. I was 12/13 when I was first introduced to the hobby and already had a strong liking for collecting 'modern' coins to learn the dates of kings and queens.
After finding my first coin, an Edward VII Penny, I was hooked. I didn't find my first hammered until a year into the hobby. When I dug it out and cleaned it with a bit of water I couldn't believe my eyes, it was an Elizabeth I Shilling.
Since then, over the past 38 years or so, I grew my collection of these lovely hammered as well as Roman.

For me I suppose collecting these is a side interest but even today I get a funny feeling in my stomach when I uncover any type of Hammered coin.

The coins I really like are Celtic and Saxon, but these are a little out of my price range but when one comes along at the right price I do try and buy them.

Thanks for starting this thread Samoth, very interesting reading!

On my own end, for most of my collecting period, cost was a big factor against getting into medievals... I could get some nice modern coins for $5-10 per coin (and often less), and some nice ancient coins for about as much (or not much more), but medieval coinage usually started at $20-30 and went up from there, and my budget struggled with considering purchases that large.
(In retrospect I could easily have bought one $50 coin instead of ten $5 coins all along, but it was really really hard to think that way, so I usually didn't unless I saw something that I really wanted to have.)

Eventually I did start getting somewhat into medievals, both as part of my attempt to get a coin from every century (and then as part of my progress towards trying to get a dated coin from every century, which by the way is a lot harder than it sounds even if we're only counting AD centuries, but not actually impossible), and because I started finding more and more coins in that time period that interested me and that (with my increasing earnings) I could now afford.
Unfortunately shortly afterwards came 2022, the draft scares, and the international move, and since mid-2022 (or so) I basically put all my coin collecting on pause (but particularly its non-modern part, since the laws of my current country make collecting medieval coins a lot harder than it used to be in Russia).


As a side-note, we'd be happy to see your coins in How Far Back Can We Go!
We're (sadly) past the 1470s and 1460s (and wouldn't get there again until 2026), but if you have something from the 1440s, 1430s, or 1420s (or 1410s or 1400s or 1390s... but those are increasingly rare) it would be quite appreciated at the appropriate date.

Interesting you mention that... earlier this year I had to acquire a "cultural heritage" export license from Belgium to ship medieval coins to the US. I never had to that before from any country. I always thought these regulations were something only ancients collectors had to worry about, but that appears to be changing.




I'd love to as soon as I get around to buying a numismatic photography setup -- I have dated coins from the '20s, '30s & '40s. (I've never had a smartphone, which is what most people use; only a 15-year-old digital camera that's not great for stuff like coins.)

On a side note, the US auction house CNG has 1375,1404, 1405, & 1418 Aachen groschens coming up in a couple weeks, but they're probably going to hammer for more than I care to spend at this time... although I do want that 1375

On my end it's that but also... for me it was a good deal easier (especially if I wasn't going to auctions) to get a pretty 4th century Roman AE3 (or AE2 even!), some 2nd century denarii and 3rd century antoniniani, maybe some Greek bronzes and one or two small silvers (my 5th century BC hemiobol cost me all of $20), and a pile of mostly-identifiable early 5th century AE3s and AE4s, than it was to find any medieval coins (with a few Byzantine exceptions that barely even counted as medieval, and of course ignoring Northern Song coinage which is very common but also only counts as medieval because it's technically in the same time period).

...In the years I was collecting, it wouldn't have stretched me that much to even get an early Byzantine tremissis. (~$150 by my recollection.) I'm still sometimes a little sad that I never had the courage to do that.