not just minted
Collector guides, emperor profiles, coin histories, and everything you need to go deeper into the ancient world.
Kroton put the tripod of Apollo on its silver and kept it there for over two centuries. This South Italian city claimed Apollo himself as the author of its f...
While other Greek cities struck kings, chariots, and battle scenes, Metapontum reduced its identity to one perfect image: an ear of barley. For more than two...
No ancient Greek coinage is as endlessly varied as the silver staters of Tarentum, Sparta's only great overseas colony and a wealthy maritime power of Magna ...
The ancient Sicilian city of Leontini turned its own name into a masterpiece. Its silver tetradrachms pair the serene, laureate head of Apollo with a roaring...
Few ancient coins are as recognizable, or as influential, as the silver tetradrachm of Alexander the Great: Herakles in the Nemean lion skin on one side, Zeu...
Before Alexander the Great conquered Persia, his father Philip II transformed Macedonia from a vulnerable kingdom into the master of Greece, and struck one o...
Marcus Aurelius did not rule alone. For eight years the Roman Empire was governed by two emperors, and his adoptive brother Lucius Verus held supreme oversig...
The dekadrachm, worth ten drachms and weighing around 42 to 43 grams, was the largest and most prestigious silver coin of the ancient Greek world, struck onl...
The diobol, worth two obols or one-third of a drachm under the Attic standard, was one of ancient Greece's most useful everyday silver coins, filling the gap...
The hemidrachm, literally "half drachm," was one of ancient Greece's most practical silver coins, filling the middle ground between the drachm and the small ...
The finest tetradrachms of Katane, struck beneath the slopes of Mount Etna, unite two of the hardest feats in Greek coin art: a convincing facing head of Apo...
The silver tetradrachm of Naxos is admired not for a ruler or for rarity alone, but for character. One side shows the mature, bearded, ivy-crowned god Dionys...
Some ancient coins are famous for beauty, others for history. The great silver dekadrachm of Akragas is famous for ambition. Into a single circular field, it...
From a wealthy Greek city on the far shore of the Black Sea came one of the most unforgettable images in all of ancient coinage: the gold stater of Pantikapa...
Ask collectors and scholars to name the greatest work of ancient coin art, and the Syracuse dekadrachms of Kimon and Euainetos almost always enter the conver...
Ancient coins are miniature sculptures, works of art small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, and the finest are studied alongside Greek sculpture itsel...
The world's most valuable ancient coins unite rarity, beauty, history, preservation, and provenance into objects of almost mythic value, from the satyr-and-g...
Rarity is one of the most fascinating and misunderstood ideas in ancient numismatics. Unlike modern coins with published mintages, the ancient world left no ...
The invention of coinage in Lydia and Ionia was one of the quiet turning points of human history. Before coins, trade meant barter or weighing metal for ever...
Before the denarius, before the Empire, Rome's money was poured rather than struck. Aes Grave ("heavy bronze") is Rome's earliest true coinage: massive cast ...
The Jewish War shekel is among the most historic coins ever struck: high-purity silver minted by the Jewish rebels of the First Revolt against Rome (AD 66-70...
The sela was one of the foundations of Jewish monetary life in the Second Temple and Rabbinic periods, the silver unit behind contracts, fines, redemption pa...
The zuz was the standard silver unit of Jewish monetary life during the Second Temple and Rabbinic periods, mentioned hundreds of times in the Mishnah and Ta...
The trachy is one of the strangest coins ever made: a shallow cup-shaped (scyphate) piece struck by the Byzantine Empire after the reforms of Alexios I Komne...
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