Ancient Coins: How were Ancient Coins Made
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 ก.ค. 2024
- There are a lot of ancient coins that reached our days. They must have had a pretty good way of manufacturing them.
Thats what we´re going to discuss today: How were ancient coins made, what kinds of peculiarities each time period had on their processes and explore the little quirks, defects and final results of each technique.
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Music: Blacksmith by Alexander Nakarada (www.serpentsoundstudios.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons BY Attribution 4.0 License
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All coin photography and graphics featured in this video
© The Trustees of the British Museum
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I am collecting coins since years but still learning a lot in watching this magnificant videos. Thank you very much and keep on!
I like flow lines on coins, from radiate on "normal" made ones to linear on roller dies
Huh, the porous appearance of my late crisis coins makes more sense now. This is a great video!!! Thanks!
cast coins were common in China but not in Europe. So if you find coins that lack the stress lines and flan cracks, beware, it is a modern forgery by casting.
That is true for the most part, but we need to be aware of some exceptions. Early Roman bronze coins were cast, as well as fractional bronze coins from the many tribes of Gaul and Britain.
@@ClassicalNumismatics thank you.
Interesting. I like that handshake coin!
A well-made and interesting video as usual!
Another great video, keep it up!
Very well done and informative. You really are very good at this.
Glad it was helpful!😀
Very interesting, thanks!
Very informative!
Great video!
great video. thankyou!
indeed thanking for sharing this here
Question I have about the clipping of the coins: what did the clipper hope to do with all those small shavings? Was there a place they could take those clippings and exchange them for goods? Was there a black market that used them for currency?
Good question!
Lets remember these coins were made out of precious metal! Even if you clipped a coin of low-grade silver, there is still some precious metal you´re keeping when clipping a coin.
You would then pass the coin on, spending it for its face value at the markets, and you would slowly accumulate a bunch of shavings of coins, which would slowly add up to the weight of a new coin. You could then bring these shavings to a mint (preferably not your local mint, otherwise you´d get caught!) and have them become brand new coins. You´ve basically created new money out of "nowhere"
@@opal6559 True! That would definitely be a less risky way of passing the "merchandise" on!
Now that was interesting !
Good video
Great video
it would be cool to get some insight into how indian coins were made as well
This is true! India has 2600 years of numismatic history that are somewhat ignored by the "western world", I need to take some time eventually to study them a bit, but they totally deserve a video someday
thank you for your vid
cool
Looks like when I make tortillas 😅4:40
I have a roman republic denarius with brockage as well as an antoninianus of Gordian III with the strike rays that you mentioned!
I have collected at least one coin of each of the Roman Emperors, some of the Augusta, and some Imperial imposters. My collection clearly shows how the coins were debased as the Roman Empire began to fail. Unfortunately, I have been unable to acquire silver coinage of the Emperors Caligula and Claudius I (due to cost), although I have been able to acquire coins composed of base metals of these two Emperors..
If you would like a silver alternative to both of these emperors, for Caligula you might want to look for his drachmae struck in cappadocia. As for Claudius, his Tetradrachm struck in Alexandria arent very rare.
You briefly mention medieval coinage. My question involves the usage of coins in say the 1700s. German States were many. Were coins strictly localized or were they used widely? Were there money changers required for many transactions?
Es gab viele Münzen, und jeder Ort, der größer als ein Dorf war, hatte Geldwechsler, die dabei viel Geld verdienten. Das Heilige Römische Reich hatte jedoch größtenteils eine Währung: den Taler (60 Kreuzer).
I have a couple widows mites, chopped down to just about nothing.
Thank you for making this video. This was exactly what I was looking for from how they did it in ancient Greece and Asia to the reasons why. Did all of these different cultures just start with making round coins or did they start square and move to round? It seems like it would be easier to make a square or rectangular coin than a round one.
The very first coins were actually just little blobs of metal with a stamp on them.
I have a couple of videos talking about some of the earliest coins, you should look at my playlists.
I wish I had some old old coins, oldest I got is a Portugese one from the mid 1700s
That must still be a pretty fascinating coin!
If you can afford this piece, you definitely can afford some late roman bronzes, and get started on Roman coinage.
I have king george iii shilling 1787 the oldest one I have so far looking to get a Elisabeth I coin
Do you know why roman/greek coins are often off centre? Sometimes the legend or writing on the outer edge of a coin is not there because the coin was struck off centre. None of the (beautiful) examples in your video have this 'feature'.
Going from how it was made, i think it is safe to assume that it's due to the minter not centering the blank properly before hammering the pattern in.
i have like 5 of those chopped off coins out of my 8 ancients
Freeze the video at 7:33. Notice the cross? I've seen it on several Medieval deniers. It doesn't appear to be part of the original design, but as a "scratch" they made afterwards. Anybody knows why they did it?
Thats a result of the striking process. :)
The coin is very thin, so the big cross design of the obverse is often projected in negative on the reverse, it is indeed quite common on medieval deniers
👏👌👍
Were their any coins with manufactured holes that weren't casting? Maybe punching or piercing? I'm interested in chain maille which have some similarities with coins. They used solid rings. Manufacturing method of the solid rings is unknown, the hypotheses are mostly surrounding using punch dies on sheet metal, which seems very labor intensive and also produces a lot of excess iron.
There are modern instances of holed struck coins, but as far as ANCIENT coins go, I believe all of the holed pieces were cast.
The hole itself was there for practical uses, to carry lots of coins on a string, but also to help on the demoulding process after casting.
Damian from Numischannel might be able to help you on this one, head over to his page and ask him.
@@ClassicalNumismatics Thank you for your reply, I will check with him
@@ClassicalNumismatics Another practical reason for the holr was to make a larger more conveniently handled coin from the same amount of metal. Take the Chinese piece. If you made a coin using that same amount of metal and the same thickness, it would only be about half the diameter of that coin. Smaller diameter coins are harder to handle and more easily lost.
An old English bit of slang was "Bandy" or "Cripple," for a bent Sixpence, which often resulted as wear due to the coin being so thin. =^[.]^=
I have made some crude coins with dies engraved in hardened steel.
Are clipped coins or manufacturing flaws more valuable like mint mistakes today?
Depends. Some errors like brockages might command a premium if the end result looks good. The same could be said for double strikes. But generally, anything that detracts from a coin, either in material, or by obstructing or "eating out" some of its details, like clipping removing some of the legends is seen as damage, and detracts from the price.
I think it's the opposite. Due to how primitive minting technology was, the perfect coins are valued the most.
By perfect I mean round, centered, deep relief, single strike, no clippings or scratchings on blankets.
Thank you for the informative video. Do you mind telling us what you say around the 1:45 mark? The Greeks and Romans needed a lot of coins for their what society to work in the first place? It almost sounds like "black" society, but I don't think you are talking about the black market...
urbanized. TH-cam has subtitles available btw, either automatically created or manual.
Sorry, audio pop, "Urbanized" was the word :)
Excuse me, do you also collect square hole money in Han Dynasty?
I dont collect them activelly, but I should make a video about ancient chinese coins soon! :)
Here is a related question: I have noticed on some auctions that some coins (i.e. Caesar Augustus, etc.) do not have a mint listed or it is listed as UNKNOWN. Do you think collectors might regard this as negative thing when it comes to deciding whether or not to bid? Or if they bid, could it have an effect on how much they might bid for it? Just curious.
Frankly, as long as the coin is genuine and someone likes the coin, I don't see an issue.
I can only see this being some sort of problem if the theme of a collection actually takes into consideration the place of minting.
Lets say someone wants to make a collection of Roman Imperial coins and will only accept coins from the mint of Rome. That person sees an interesting denarius of Augustus, but many of his denarii have been minted on auxiliary or military mints, and some are of dubious origin or even unknown origins. Could that put that collector off? Yes. But that would be a minority of collectors.
There is also the situation where auction houses or stores have to deal with a massive inventory, and will only write quick descriptions, and a collector upon better attribution of their coin, in regards to catalogue numbers might even find out the coin IS related to a known mint.
@@ClassicalNumismatics .... thank you very much for the informative reply!
@Classical Numismatics .... you know what? You are absolutely right. I just spent about a half hour researching one of the coins, and discovered (based on the RIC # and the known pictured examples), that it was from Lugdunum (Lyon).
Hello there I'm interested in collecting ancient coins especially roman coins. Where should I buy a genuine/real coins?
Websites?
Hi Jack! Have a look at the other videos on my channel, I have some videos explaining how and where to buy genuine coins, as well as affordable alternatives to Roman and Greek coins! :)
@@ClassicalNumismatics thanks for the info I will definitely watch your other videos
Minute 2:30. The coin shown was probably cut up, with a portion being retained by the original owner, due to the fact of the deflationary value of the silver content, if any. It would be used at the original value if possible.
Although I get what you mean there, this is very likely not the case. This is a case of a flan having its casting spruce hastily being removed and taking a "bite" out of the coin.
Clipping was made in more subtle ways, cutting small bits off the edges of the coin and trying to do so without calling attention to the removed material, which is not this case.
i have a ancient goins but i dont know from what year and it is greek or roman coins. can anybody help me to distinguish this kind of ancient Coins.
in my opinion they look like Greek coins
Post them to r/ancientcoins
send it to me and i will tell you what coin you have (had)
@@theshuriken good method