Jan 11
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.
Jan 3
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.
Dec 29
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.
Dec 27
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.
Dec 26
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.
Dec 22
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.
Dec 20
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?
This is one of his coins and it was minted 793-812
AD.
Related articles
Dec 7
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.
Related articles
Dec 1
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).
Nov 22
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.
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"
Nov 16
The Denarius was an old roman silver coin first minted in 211 BC and weighed 4.5 grams although it did weigh a little less during Nero and Vespasian's time.
The other type of coins during that time equaled each other in the following ratios: 1 gold aureus = 2 gold quinarii = 25 silver denarii = 50 silver quinarii = 100 bronze sestertii = 200 bronze dupondii = 400 copper as= 800 copper semisses = 1600 copper quadrans
The word denarius is derived from the Latin dēnī "containing ten", as its value was 10 asses.
The Bible refers to the denarius as a day's wage for a common laborer in Matthew 20:2 and is referred to in John 12:5.
The Denarius would have weighed about as much as a modern day nickel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:8denarii.jpg
Nov 9
Indian Head pennies in general were minted 1859-1909, were designed by James Barton Longacre . They depict Liberty wearing an Indian headdress, so that is why it is named Indian Head penny although it is not actually an Indian.
I am mainly writing about the 1859 laurel wreath Indian Head penny. These were only minted in 1859 and had a laurel wreath and no shield on the reverse. In the next years they changed it to an oak wreath with a shield and these were minted until 1909. The 1859 Cent (and also the pennies minted 1860-1864) were 88% copper and 12% nickel and were commonly called Nickels or Nicks until the 1866 nickel was issued. After that they were sometimes called White Cents.
I bought one yesterday for my coin collection and it really does look a lot whiter than other Indian Head pennies of later dates.
The 1859 indian head penny.
A regular indian head penny
Nov 2
The Egyptian Deben in the Middle Kingdom period was a unit of specific weight for weighing gold or copper. There was a different type of Deben for gold and a different type for copper. The Deben for copper weighed about 23 grams but was not actually marked as such on the piece of copper. The Deben for gold weighed about 11 grams. They would just weigh the metal every time with a Deben on a scale. The Deben was made out of stone.
See pictures here of some stone weight Debens http://www.digitalegypt.ucl.ac.uk/weights/weight.html
Oct 31
Egypt, Used the Deben. It weighed 13.6 grams.
Babylonian, Used the Babylonian Shekel.
Persian, Used the gold Daric (8.3 g) and the silver siglos (5.3 g)
Greece, Used the Drachma which weighed 4.5 grams of silver
Roman, Used the gold Aureus which weighed about 8 grams and the silver Denarius which weighed 6.8 grams.
Carthaginian, used a shekel alothough I am not sure what it was made of or how much it wieghed.
I personally like the roman coins and the one picture I found of a Cartheginian coin with a horse on it, I think the horse looks pretty cool.
I noticed that some of the empires use different coins but with the same name, just like the US Dollar and the Canadian Dollar. I wonder why that is?
A lot of these silver coins are just a few grams heavier than a modern day US quarter.
I can't get all of the coin information on this post, but I got what I could.
Oct 13
This blog is about Shekels, Minas, and Talents in the Old Testament. According to my book "Handbook to the Bible", one Shekel weighs about 11 grams of silver and 50 Shekels equals about 1 Mina. A Mina weighs about 500 grams of silver and 60 Minas equal one talent. Now then, a Talent was a lot of money back then because it weighed almost 60 pounds of silver and that is a lot of money.
By the way, there are 28 grams in an ounce so do the math if you want.
I had never known that a Talent was worth so much. I had always just assumed that it was worth ten or twenty dollars in all the Bible parables. It would really be worth about $28,000 in today's money at $30 for an ounce of silver.
Oct 12
What does a coin need to be? Well, a coin has to be designed well so it can't be tamperd with or counterfeited very easily. A good design has ridges and a face and other designs like that so you can tell if it was tampered with by the smeared face. Actually it doesn't matter what is on it just as long as the people could recognize it. It is also a good idea that whoever making the coins have their own design so that the people could decide whether or not to trust it.
I think that the trade dollar and the morgan dollar have two of the best coin designs.
Oct 10
Inflation means things cost more even though the usefulness of the items hasen't changed.
Here are two causes of inflation:
1. Government printing more money which makes people bid more on items, causing items go higher in dollar prices but the usefulness of the items is still the same.
2. Loss of items like in time of war, making items cost more in dollar prices because there is the same amounnt of previous money bidding up the old prices on a smaller amount of items left over.
Deflation means that things cost less money even though the items haven't lost their usefulness.
Here are two examples:
1. Loss of money forcing items to cost less money because there isn't enough money to go around to bid up to the previous prices.
2. Being able to make things better and cheaper causing items to have lower dollar prices. (Which is good).
Oct 5
What money should be:
Durable – it doesn't rot, it last for a long time.
Divisible – something you can make into smaller change.
Fusible – you are able to put it back together to make larger change.
Have intrinsic value – it's worth something because people want it even when it's not used for money.
Portable - easy to transport, something you could put in your pocket.
Widespread Desirability – everyone wants it.
Uniform – easy to recognize as the real thing for a particular amount.
Quality – you can't cheat it easily.
By the way gold and silver fit all these needs and that is why they are used so often.
Oct 4
In the begining with only Adam and Eve, there would not of been much need for money because there were only a few people on earth , and so it would be pointless to have money. But as there were more and more people there would have been a need for an item that everybody would want. And it would have to be small, wouldn't take very much to buy something, and that wouldn't go bad. Here is an example of why you would need money. Lets say that you are a glass blower and want some pottery from the potter but all you have to trade is glass, so you go to the potter and offer him some glass in exchange for a pot, but the potter doesn't want glass, he says he wants lumber instead. So you have to go to the lumber man and so on and so on untill you finally find someone who wants your glass. So as you can see this could drag on for a long time and that's were money comes in.
What we like to do sometimes on our street that is kind of like this is everybody brings out all their rocks, trinkets and things out on our drive way and then we all start to trade with each other. It is by the way, very fun.
Sep 29
I have been reading about public housing in Henry Hazlitt's book "Economics In One Lesson". The topic is about how the Government decides to spend money to buy bigger houses for the people with lower income so they can have a lower rent. Henry Hazlitt disagrees and explains why the Government shouldn't do that.The main reason is because the tax payer could use that money on something a lot better than having to give it to the Government. When the Government spends it on making new houses it looks really big and cool and everybody sees it. But what they don't see is that there is much less money available to the tax payer to fix a small thing like the door and many other small things.
