The American Peace Dollar

The next dollar that was minted after the Morgan dollar, was the peace dollar. The peace dollar was minted to commemorate the end of WW1. Now this is where a lot of people get a little confused. A lot of people think that it was minted as a commemorative coin and not made for circulation, but that is not completely true. Yes, in a way it was a commemorative coin, but ever since they had the first idea of minting it, it was intended for circulation.

  A man named Frank Duffield thought that the Mint should start to mint a coin commemorating the end of WW1, so he wrote about it in his newspaper. A coin club saw that article and liked the idea, so they spread around the idea and brought it to Congress. Congress took their time deciding and nothing was really decided. Meanwhile the idea had spread around and a lot of people knew about it, and liked the idea (I think that they were getting tired of Morgan dollars, since they hadn't changed the design for almost 50 years).  The mint director, Mr. Baker, heard of the idea and really tried hard to get Congress to approve it, along with quite a few other people. But Congress still wouldn't come to a decision. Pretty soon they heard that the President was going to officially announce peace after the war (for some reason they hadn't done that yet) sometime near the end of that year (1921).

Now everybody was trying to get Congress to approve it so they could start minting the coins before the end of the year. But they still wouldn't come to a decision. Meanwhile, Mr. Baker had started a contest between eight people to make a design for the peace dollar. All of them had designed an American coin before. So they had a contest and Mr. Baker chose Anthony de Francisci's design.

A few months before the end of the year someone realized that they didn't need Congress approval to change the design. Apparently there was a law made awhile back that says that a coin can be changed after 25 years, and I guess that meant that they didn't have to have Congress approval to start minting the coins, because they started minting the coins.

The original design was a lot like the one that you can see now, except that there was a broken sword underneath the eagle. I think that this was supposed to symbolize the end of the war, but most people interpreted it as defeat. A lot of people started complaining about the design so Mr. Morgan, (then chief designer for the mint) took out the broken sword, and so made what you see now.

The peace dollar has an okayish design, but I think that the Morgan dollar was a little better over all. But what would be really cool is if they used the eagle from the peace dollar, and the liberty head from the morgan dollar. Now that would be a perfect coin.

Peace dollar restruck privately to produce 1964 date. (Photo credit:Wikipedia)

Reverse of Peace Dollar Русский: Реверс мирного доллара (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Modern Day Counterfeit Coins

If you look down at the pictures below, you can see that one of the coins is thiner than the other.

(download)

Click here to download:

modern-day-counterfeit-coins-GyEaBGqvkAEJdBJqrmBq.zip (3.7 MB)

The Columbian Exposition Commemorative Half Dollar

Columbian Exposition half dollar (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Columbian Exposition half dollar (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The first Ferris wheel from the 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Columbian Exposition Commemorative was the first Commemorative minted by the US. It was minted from 1892 to 1893 for the Colombian Exposition world fair in Chicago, commemorating the 400th anniversary of Columbus landing in America.

 The government sold them at about a dollar each to help raise money for the fair. They also minted 103 special proof coins for the high officials in the fair, and to sell at a  high price to the public. Three of which were the 400th, 1,492nd and 1,892nd coins struck. The 400'th represented the 400th anniversary of Columbus sailing to the America's, the 1492'nd coin representing 1492, the date that he landed in the America's, and the 1892nd representing the anniversary of that date.

The government gave a lot of the coins to the bank as a collateral for the loans that they were taking out for the fair. And when the government wasn't able to pay them, the banks spent the coins at their face value. 

The Philadelphia mint was the only mint that minted these coins. They minted about 5 million pieces during their mintage. The obverse has the design of Columbus, and the reverse has a design of a ship and two globes. It was design by Charles E. Barber, and by George T. Morgan. Mr. Morgan had also design the Morgan Dollar. And Mr. Barber had designed the barber half dollar and quarter.

 This was the first commemorative coin I bought for my coin collection, and also the cheapest one. These coins were very popular when they were made so a lot of people hung onto them, so that's why these coins are so cheap today.

• History of the World's Fair (jottingswithjasmine.wordpress.com)

Draped Bust dollars

1807 Half Dollar, Draped Bust, Reverse (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Obverse of an 1803 dollar (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

1804 silver dollar (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Medici pt. 2

The Medici Bank

Cosimo de' Medici the Elder (1389-1464), son of Giovanni di Bicci di Medici. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Cosimo de' Medici (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Bust of Lorenzo de' Medici by Verrocchio (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Medici bank was started by a person called Giovanni de bicci. When he first started out he was working in a bank for his distant cousin, Messer Vier di Cambio de' Medici. He got all his banking knowledge from there, and eventually started his own bank in Rome.

  Since his nephew also had a bank in Rome and he didn't want to compete with it too much, he moved his headquarters to Florence. Eventually Giovanni retired and the bank was then taken over by his two sons. Whom he had been training in banking for a long time so that they would be able to run it. By this time the Medici bank had several branches in Rome, Florence, Venice and Naples. They also had some investments in a wool shop that was making quite a lot of money. Eventually they would also have banks in London, Genova, and Avignon. Out of all the branches Rome always made the most money throughout the history of the Medici bank.

The interesting thing about the Medici bank was that if you were a good worker and made several good choices, you would be climbing the ranks quite quickly and would probably become a manager of a branch. But of course the same goes the other way, if you are a bad worker you will probably be fired immediately, and that also includes just making a few bad investments or choices.

Managers had to invest a certain amount into their branch, and would usually be partners in it with someone else. They were paid by the Medici and didn't just take profits out of what they made, but got a certain percentage of it. And depending how much they made sometimes they would get paid more money than agreed.

Oh, and by the way, the name Midici is actually pronounced "Medichi".

The Italian Florin

The Italian Florin was first minted in Florence, (probably why they named it the Florin) and was minted from 1252 to 1533. That would mean that they were minted for more than three hundred years! It has 3.5 grams of gold. Back then it would have had the purchasing power of about 200 of our modern day US dollars.

 Since most of the Florentine banks such as the Medici bank were international, the Florin was spread throughout medieval Europe. It was widely trusted and known, and other countries started minting their own variations of it.

The Florin had stamped on the front side, the fleur de lis, and on the back it had St. John wearing a hair coat. Around one picture of the coin it told the name of the saint, and the other side had "Florentia" written around it.

It's interesting that it lasted for three hundred years, it shows that it was a good and trust worthy coin. There were other denominations of coins from Florence but I can't find enough information about them to write a blog.

Front and back of a Florentine florin (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Italian Florin (gold coin), series XXVII, 1462 AD * Italiano: 1462, secondo semestre, fiorino d'oro, XXVII serie, con San Giovanni Battista e, alla sua sinistra, lo stemma Ridolfi. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Coat of Arms of Florence, Italy, traced off of File:Firenze-Stemma.png (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Decrease of Banks in Florence

Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

Around 1338 there were 80 banks of money changers in Florence. In 1350 two years after the Black Death, there were only 57 firms. Six years later there were three more banks, and by 1399 there were 71 banks in Florence. They almost caught up to what they had lost since 1338. But, they didn't catch up, because by 1460 there were only 33, it stayed at this number until 1492. By 1490 there was a sudden decline in the amount of banks in Florence, pretty soon there wasn't even enough people to fill all the offices of the money changer's guild. By 1520 only seven banks were left in Florence.

 Nobody really knows why there were so many banks started failing at the end if the 1400s, but I am guessing that they might have just made too many bad loans, or, maybe there just wasn't that much of a demand for banking. Other cities also had banks closing such as Bruges and Venice so it wasn't just Florence that was affected.

I think it is interesting how there was a slow decline until the end of the 1400s and then suddenly over half the banks are gone.

The End Of Byzantine Empire

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Hagia Sophia mosaic (Photo credit: David Jones)

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Well, first of all, this isn't quite the end of the Byzantine empire yet, but this definitely contributed to its destruction.

  In the year 1202 Alexios III was the emperor of Byzantine. The way that he had become emperor was by capturing, blinding, and putting into prison the emperor before him (Isaac II), who was also his own brother. Well, Isaac had a son who's name was also Alexios, and he was allowed to be free. So the son of Isaac set out to try to find an army in the West to free his father and make him emperor again. At one point he stopped in the city of Venice and there found a huge army of French and Flemish knights that we now know as the Fourth Crusade. They were trying to set out to capture Jerusalem but were not able to leave the city because they didn't have enough money to pay the city of Venice for the ships that they ordered. So when Alexios found them he told them that if they attacked Constantinople to put his father back on the throne then he would pay them 200,000 silver marks and 10,000 men to help them. In 1203 the Latin army besieged Constantinople, took the tower that held the chain, and was able get into the Golden Horn and eventually got into the city. In August 1203 Isaac and his son were crowned emperor of Byzantine.

  After that, the Latins wanted their pay so they could go on to Jerusalem, but Alexios didn't have the funds. So he started to melt down church icons into coins to pay them, but the people didn't like that at all. But, instead of blaming Alexois they blamed the Latins and pretty soon there were riots in the streets and people killing western merchants and just chaos. There was a huge fire that lasted for a week and devastated a third of the city.

  Meanwhile the Latins had declared war on Constantinople. Eventually they conquered it. They plundered the city of anything of value, raided the churches, killed thousands of people, and totally ruined the city. Over time the Latins decided from their own leaders who would be Emperor. But, with the exception of one, throughout their reign they were horrible Emperors and bankrupted the city.

I think it is interesting how the Byzantines bragged that no foreign army could ever take the city and then the Latins came along and captured it for themselves. What apparently gave the crusaders a great advantage was that they were able to get into the golden horn by taking the tower that held the chain to keep ships from getting into the golden horn.

Constantinople Trade

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Image via Wikipedia

Constantinople was very wealthy mainly from its trade. The reason it was a large and very rich trading city in the medieval times was because of its location. It was right in the middle of the western world and the eastern world and so lots of merchants from different countries came here to trade. 

 Each country got its own section for trading in or outside the city. As a result there was a lot of conflict for the better spot to trade. For instance, the Russians launched a surprise attack on Constantinople in 911 AD. So Constantinople agreed to a treaty that allowed Russian merchants to trade tax free, have free lodging, and have free baths whenever they liked. The Russians now had better trading privileges than any other country. Of course this didn't last long because as soon as the Byzantines had the upper hand they changed the rules back the way they were and didn't allow Russians in the except by one gate and then only unarmed and no more than fifty at a time.

 A few times when Constantinople was under threat from southern Italy they made a treaty with northern Italy for military protection in exchange low taxes for the merchants trading in Constantinople, and their own section inside the city walls for trading. Most countries were only allowed to trade outside the city walls so this was very benefitting for the northern Italians.

 There were other agreements like this made to other countries overtime. Usually the Byzantines tried to change the treaty as soon as they didn't need help but then that country would go to war with them and the treaty would be restored.

 It's interesting how the Byzantines used trading privileges for military help. I wonder how many countries came to Constantinople to trade?

The Gold Ducat of the middle ages

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Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

The gold Ducat was first minted sometime in the 1200s and was ended sometime in the 1800s. The Ducat weighed 3.4909 grams, of which there was about 0.1107 actual gold weight.

The Ducat was a popular coin during the middle ages and although it was thought to be originally minted by Roger II of Sicily it quickly spread to other parts of Europe as other countries started to mint these coins also.

There was also a silver Ducat issued by many of the European nations.

The most common ducat was the Dutch ducat stamped with the impression of an armed figure which eventually changed to Louis II of Flanders. These ducats were used a lot, and as a result, were often counterfeited. Apparently the counterfeiting  was mostly done in the Grisons which is a part of Switzerland.  

I think it is interesting how popular these coins became. It shows that these must have been trustworthy coins.

The Byzantine Hyperpyron

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Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

As time went by the Solidus was able to stay at 24 carat for seven centuries, until the 1030s and from there it went down hill until there wasn't much gold left in it. In 1092 Emperor Alexios I Komnenos got rid of the Solidus and started minting a new gold coin called the Hyperpyron.

This gold coin was only 20 carat gold instead of 24 carat gold due to the recycling of other debased coins.

But unfortunately  this coin was also eventually debased from 20 carat to 18 carats by the Empire of Nicaea, and from 18 carats to 12 under Michael VIII Palaiologos and his son. By this time (some where in the 1300s or 1400s) the Hyperpyron were hardly struck consistently in weight and the Empire was falling apart. The last Emperor to mint these coins was John VI Kantakouzenos. 

<--- If you look closely at this coin here, you can see that when they struck the coin, some of the metal was flattened out from the sides. Our modern day coins don't have this because we have machines that hold the coin around the rim so that won't flatten out when it is struck.

The Byzantine Solidus

Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

The Solidus (also known as the nomisma) weighed about 5.5 grams and was almost pure gold.

Since the Government demanded that all taxes be paid in gold, the Solidus was usually minted wherever the main Government City was in the empire. Such as it was at one time minted in Milan in 353, and also in Ravenna after 402.

What I read that was really interesting is that every time the treasury got one of these coins it was melted and reissued so as to keep the finesse and weight of the gold the same. The reason for this is since the coin was mostly gold it would wear down quite quickly. 

Even though the Government forbid the merchants to trade the coins outside the empire they still did. So as a result of this, there were a lot of gold coins floating around the outside of the empire that were worn and had less gold. Then other countries started minting their own gold coins that weighed about 4.4 grams, which would have been the same weight of the worn Byzantine coins.

I think it was a good idea of the way they got around the problem of having soft gold coins but it must have been a bit expensive always replacing the missing gold on each coin.

The Byzantine Follis

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This post is also about the earlier 500 AD Nummus. This coin was then minted in different denominations and were referred to as Follis in general. The denominations were 40 nummi also known as follis, 20 nummi (semifollis), and 10 nummi (decanummium). Each of these coins had a greek letter to mark the value. The Follis had "M", the Semifollis had "K" and the Decanummium had an "I". What is interesting about this is that these were not random letters but the entire Greek alphabet had a number for each letter. So if you were to look at the list here, and look up M, K and I you would see that each of these matched the amount of Nummi that they were worth.

It seems to me that the values were similar in proportion to our American Dime, Quarter and Half Dollar. What I mean by that is that our coins like the Byzantine coins actually had their values marked on them unlike some other Roman coins I have seen. You would tell the difference on Roman coin by the pictures on them. The Nummus value can be recognised by the picture and the number.

The American Two Cent Piece

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Image via Wikipedia

The Two cent piece was first minted 1864 and ended in 1873 and was deigned by James B. Longacre (who by the way also designed the shield nickel). It was also the first coin to bear the motto "In God We Trust" on it. There was 95% copper in it and the rest was tin and zink (modern day pennies are only 0.8% copper and the rest is zink because it is cheaper). The same law that allowed the two cent pieces to be made also ended the minting of the half dimes and two years later the first nickels would be minted.

My book doesn't say why they were minted for such a short time, but I am guessing that it was because it was the same shape as some other coins that people got confused and didn't really like them, and I suppose it was just easier to use two pennies instead.

This is one of my favorite coins. It seems like the size and color go perfect together and the shield looks really neat.

The Byzantine Nummus

The Nummi (nummi is plural) were small copper coins that had a very low value and were minted by the Byzantine Empire 500-700 AD. There were other dates but for now this post is just about that period. The Nummus was a very small coin that weighed less than a gram, was made made out of copper, was about half the size of the modern day American penny, and usually badly struck. The official value was about 1/7,200 of the gold solidus although it was actually sometimes lower or higher than that. I think, but I could be wrong, that it was probably worth just as much or less than the modern day penny.

The Nummus usually had the portrait of the Emperor at that time on one side and on the other side the imperial monogram which is basically a sort of coat of arms.     

I would like to own on of these coins, I wonder how much they cost?

I am surprised that they even bothered minted these coins as it must of been very hard to mint because of their size. 

Image by peterjr1961 via Flickr

Image via Wikipedia

Charlemagne Coins

Charlemagne had his coin system on silver and not gold because gold at that time was scarce due to some sort of closing in some of the trade routes. So what Charlemagne started was a new standard called  livre carolinienne (which came from the Latin word libra) Which was basically a pound of silver which was worth twenty sous or 240 Deniers. The Denier was really the only coin that you would actually carry around with you to spend on a regular basis as the others were worth quite a lot more. This system of money later on was adopted by England as the Pound and Shilling and so on.

I wonder if that is French written on this coin and if so, what does it say? 

Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

• What role did Charlemagne play in the Middle Ages (wiki.answers.com)

Start a Collecting Kit for Roman Coins

Image via Wikipedia

I was searching on Wikipedia for some information about Roman coins and there was a link at the bottom that went to a website called Dirtyoldcoins. I clicked on it and it brought me to a web site that told about ancient Roman coins and also sold them. What really caught my attention was that they were selling a kit called Roman Emperor in A Box. It is a kit that helps you to start collecting Roman coins and it comes with eleven old and dirty Roman coins, some cleaning supplies, and software that helps you identify and learn about the coins. They also sell just plain Roman coins and some other coins from different places around the world. I think their kit is a great idea. It would really help kids get motivated about collecting and is also cheap. 

The reason why these coins are so inexpensive in comparison with roman coins that you might see at a coin show, is because there is no collector's value. The really expensive ones are in perfect condition, certain dates, etc. But these ones in the kit have no collector's value because they are not in any special condition, don't have any precious metals in them and there are lots of them. But they do have lots of historical value. 

• Learn About Coin Collecting and Trading! (optionsanimal.com)
• What names were roman coins called (wiki.answers.com)

The Origin of Sterling Silver

Sometime around 1250 a German City Lübeck started to mint silver coins containing 95% silver and 5% copper, the reason why they used copper in it was because by itself silver is too soft and so it would not work well as a coin. Any way, the Lübeck coins started to become very popular in Europe and were very well known the Merchants of Lübeck had their own spot where they traded by the London bridge for wool, metals, etc. So the silver Lübeck coins were often used by the Londoners too, and they called them Easterlings or Easterners and if you shorten the word Easterlings you will get sterling which that ratio is now called, and later England adopted it as their unit of money along with the pound.

Twenty of these lübeck coins would weigh about one ounce.

I think it is kind of weird how words can stick even if people do not always know what they originated from, I am sure there are a lot more words like it.

I got all of my information from a book called the romance of weights and measures.

 The seal of Lübeck that might of been on the Lübeck coins (1280).

Emperor Worship on Roman Coins

Octavian (Augustus) Caesar, the son of Julius Caesar, had coins showing himself on one side described as "Caesar son of a god"and on the other side, "the god Julius". Since Julius had been voted as a god after his death by the Roman senate, Augustus was also seen as a sort of god.

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Nero too, also had himself on some copper coins that were struck in Rome and at Lugdunum. He depicted himself as Apollo (the Roman sun god, one of the leading gods) playing the lyre with his head radiating the light of the sun. He was basically saying the he was Apollo, or at least, on the same terms with him.

The Romans saw their Emperors as gods because they loved them, and so, usually after their death, they were voted a god and worshiped and sometimes they were worshiped even before they were dead. But, when Nero came along, he forced the people to worship him almost right from the start and murdered lots of people including his mother and wife. He also made the people like his music (apparently he wasn't a very good musician) and as a result, the people didn't really like him all that much.

What this coin basically says is "Augustus Caesar" on one side and on the other "Divine Julius"