Modern interest in the study of coins arose with the desire to visualise the rulers and deities of historical texts. Since the wake of the 16th-century renaissance, the study of Roman coinage is influenced by three main disciplines. The answer to why these disciplines vary in approach to what is ultimately one of the most familiar artefacts in our daily lives is down to the origin of the studies of coins themselves and the various influences of archaeology and economics as our understanding of sociology and anthropology has developed.

Art History

In the lens of the ancient historian, coins are seen as an alternate medium of aesthetic historical expression. The importance of coins in this sense was to identify the issuer or deity on the obverse, interpret the imagery on the reverse, and match them to known statues or historical events.

Reliance on inscriptions in the foundation of numismatics as a component of ancient history led to one of the principle reference texts of the 19th century, Cohen’s 8 Volumes written between 1857 and 1892 to be ordered alphabetically to aid in further identification. It was, however, the chronological-metallist way of structuring coin collections that still persists and separates numismatics from other historic disciplines.

Any collector of Roman coins will instantly recognise The Roman Imperial Coinage text by the great numismatists Mattingly and Sydenham that is littered through the many thousands of coin journals, auction catalogues and websites. The text followed earlier traditions by listing by metal, taking note of both size and weight and recording then of type by inscription. It also marks a new facet of coin studies by separating coins geographically by mint with a strong focus on ancient history.

Economic History

The next major influence on numismatics would be that of economic history. Formalist economic thought became a growing influence on numismatics in the late 19th and early 20th century based on the idea that the value of the metals in the Roman monetary system was intrinsic and that the decisions of the Roman government and where they placed their mints could be rationalised within modern economic theory. Entire sections of publications could be dedicated to exploring the metal content and economic policies of the empire.

The empires of 18th to 20th century Europe had found an analogue that they could relate to in the form of the Roman and Greek civilisations. The influence ran deep and it is apparent in not only the architecture of the time on a large scale but also down to the minutiae of coinage. The currency system was very overtly based on the Roman system. For example, British currency values: pounds (l); shillings (s) and pence (d) related directly to the Roman pound, solidus and denarius; and had done for centuries.

Archaeology

How we find and acquire coins using principles of archaeology came into focus in the 1960s. The book Coins and the Archaeologist argued that highlighted how the importance of coins varied across vastly different provinces of an empire, citing sources such as the Satyricon and the New Testament of the Bible.

The most recent emphasis in numismatics in the last decade has shifted towards the social or anthropological role of coinage. The Social Lives of Things by Appadurai outlines the idea that objects themselves have a kind of life story and taking a view that delves deeper into who actually owned the coins.

There are many stakeholders in the world of numismatics. While numismatists may think of a coin as an individual specimen, they are seen as historical documents, artefacts and as a greater whole of the monetary supply.

This blog is an abridged version of an article by Alex Fallows MA, published in Baldwin’s Fixed Price List, Summer 2018, p. 4-7.

The lifelike representation of the human face was a major focus for artists during the Greek Archaic and Classical periods. Their images showed gods or heroes, the Platonic Forms of divinity or beauty. Following the victories of Alexander III, we begin to find on statues and coins depictions of the rulers of Syria, Egypt and Bactria with individualised features: real people rather than abstractions.

The last years of Republican Rome and the early centuries of the Empire saw the highest degree of sophistication in portraits, from stone busts and painted mummy cases to coins. A reincarnated Nero or Nerva would be instantly recognisable them with little difficulty. No other period before the Renaissance, depicted the enigmatic faces of real individuals as if they were still alive.

On some rare occasions, this realism has conferred immortality on even ordinary citizens. At the Metropolitan Museum in New York, Cominia Tyche, the ‘chaste and loving wife’ of Lucius Annius Festus is as alive today in her funerary altar with a crooked smile and round chin as during her brief sojourn in this world at the end of the first century AD.

This window into the past was closed all too soon. Some historians attribute the change to an increasingly totalitarian and theocratic nature of Roman society. For example, the image of the emperor in mosaics and on coins became a hieratic facing icon flanked by crosses during the reign of Justinian I (527-65), who closed the only remaining forum for freedom of thought, the Platonic Academy in Athens.

Similarly, portraiture on British coinage also sank as low as that of any of the successor states to the Western Roman Empire with the facing busts of the short-cross and long-cross coinages of the Plantagenets.

The evocative authenticity of the coins as historical objects is intense and compelling and exact portraiture is a valuable achievement of civilisation: a humanising force. Even when technical skill has not been equal to the task, the attempt has still been made over the centuries to depict faces – from Zeus and Athena to ordinary citizens.

This blog is an abridged version of an article by James Booth, first published in Baldwin’s Fixed Price List, Winter 2018, p. 3-7.

James Booth

The Gothic crown of Victoria belongs among that handful of coins which are regularly declared to be ‘the most beautiful in the English Series’. But what does it mean to describe the applied art of a coin as ‘beautiful’? In the case of the dekadrachms of ancient Syracuse or the didrachms of Thessaly, the question answers itself. Aesthetic appeal was clearly among the foremost aims of the makers of these coins. Some Syracusan die-cutters even signed their dies as works of art. More recently, the Committee on the Coinage set up in 1926 by the Irish Free State and chaired by the poet W. B. Yeats was charged with choosing designs of the ‘finest artistic effect’, in an assertion of cultural assurance exorcising centuries of oppression. The designs of the English engraver Percy Metcalfe, who won the competition (woodcock, pig, hen, hare, hound, bull, salmon and hunter), remain iconic examples of fine design.

But rarely in coinage are aesthetic motives so much to the fore. Artistic considerations may be of some relevance to the immobilised designs of late medieval pennies, florins, ducats, groats, dinars and dirhems. But the main motive is utilitarian: to reassure the user with familiar symbols of the power which guarantees the coin’s value, or, as in the case of the pennies of William the Conqueror or the European talers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, to inspire awe for the monarch’s power and magnificence. It is this last motive which is most likely, if other circumstances happen to be right, to produce a ‘beautiful’ result. But, when the word ‘beauty’ is applied to a coin today, one suspects also that the gender of the monarch portrayed may be a factor. Coin collecting is a romantic pastime and the word ‘beautiful’ will perhaps come more readily to the lips of a modern collector when considering a 30 shilling sovereign of Mary Tudor than one of Henry VII, or a pound of Elizabeth I rather than Briot’s Scottish unite of Charles I.

In some cases, also, the pressures of the coin market compromise the evaluation of a coin’s ‘beauty’. Cataloguers and collectors overstate the attraction of the unfamiliar rarity in comparison with that of a commoner coin. The double leopard of Edward III is lauded above the more imaginative design of the commoner noble. Similarly lavish praise is heaped on William Wyon’s early proof five-pound piece of Victoria, whose faintly preposterous Una and the Lion reverse has a solemnity verging on the unintentional self-parody of ‘Victoriana’. In contrast the commoner Gothic crown, with its elaborate bust rather than high relief head, and its cross-of-shields reverse, retains a less ‘dated’ appeal.

In the early nineteenth century, the Romantic Movement replaced the ‘neoclassicism’ of the Enlightenment with medieval, ‘Gothic’ styles in art and architecture. Three elements of the design of the Gothic crown manifest this ‘retro’ fashion. First there is the lettering, which is an exquisite Victorian reimagining of the Gothic scripts and typefaces of Northern Europe of the Medieval and Renaissance periods, familiar to us today from Tudor incunabula printed with ‘black letter’ type, or the prints of Dürer. The year this coin was issued, 1847, saw the opening of the Lords Chamber in the Palace of Westminster, designed by Charles Barry and ornamented with a profusion of gold-leaf gothic script by the Catholic convert, Augustus Pugin. But the script in the Houses of Parliament and on the coin shows a characteristic Victorian paradox. The immaculate precision of each letter manifests all the characteristics of industrial mass-production, making its effect far indeed from the quaint irregularities of real medieval black-letter type produced with wooden blocks. As with the pinnacles and crockets of Barry’s Houses of Parliament or the cast-iron columns of Victorian railway stations, a confident modern mastery of technology contradicts the archaic past which it nostalgically evokes. The Victorians’ medievalism is expressed with ultra-modern sophistication.

The second ‘Gothic’ characteristic is the medieval hairstyle with its long plait framing the ear, and the bodice with its square colletage and elaborate lacework, making the queen into a version of Madeline in Keats’s Eve of St Agnes or Beatrice in a painting by Millais or Dante Gabriel Rossetti. It is a style that would certainly have been attractive to Albert, the German royal consort, whom the queen had married in 1840. This English queen is at the same time a German Mädchen. The monarch also makes a personal appeal to the viewer as a glamorous celebrity. In a similar way photographs of the young Elizabeth II gave her a touch of the Hollywood film star.   Victoria, here, with her half open lips is vulnerable and, very discreetly eroticised. This is a version of female royalty rare in earlier periods, though we can detect it perhaps in the bust on the first sole-reign groat of Mary Tudor, with its refined profile and flowing, unrestrained hair. Medieval romances were still popular in the Tudor period, and Mary has something of the appearance of a Lady from the world of chivalry. The coins of Mary’s sister Elizabeth also evoke the mystique of romance, but only rarely in her portrayals does femininity prevail over majesty.  

It is Victoria’s femininity which, perhaps, made possible the third ‘Gothic’ feature of this crown: the crown itself. After the Restoration in 1666 Charles II had briefly reasserted the ‘divine right’ to kingship which his father had so sincerely, and disastrously, claimed. On his initial hammered coinage Charles wears the crown which he had so unexpectedly regained. But this bravado was short-lived. Charles II, unlike his father, was a modern pragmatist. On his subsequent milled issues he wears the Roman wreath seen on the ‘laurel’ coins of James I and also on the coinage of the republican Cromwell. Charles knew better than to tempt providence by insisting on the more archaic symbols of kingship. In what was now a ‘constitutional monarchy’ his subjects were beginning to see themselves as citizens rather than subjects. Perhaps, also, it seemed inappropriate to proclaim an out-of-date ideology on the new, machine-made ‘milled’ coins. For the best part of two centuries rulers were content to confine the wearing of crowns to their coronation medals. The circulating coins showed the less contentious image of a defender of a Roman res publica, the men wearing a wreath, the women a fillet.

But by the time of Victoria, the world had moved on. The republican spirit of the French Revolution had succeeded in crossing the channel only in diluted forms, and an idealizing medievalism gave support to political and religious atavism. By 1847 it seemed safe once more to show the monarch wearing a crown. And where better to do this than on a ‘crown’ coin? Victoria’s gender must surely also be relevant. On the head of a young woman the crown no doubt seemed less provocative than on the head of a man, incurring less risk that the ‘dei gratia’ in the legend would be take to mean literally what it said, as it had done to the followers of Charles I. Now, rather, it carried a Romantic, Anglican, metaphorical meaning. Like Mary this queen was again a figure of romance, but ‘romance’ revisited: performative and sophisticated. On a more abstract level Wyon’s artistic use of the silver medium in his portrayal of the young queen, is in itself subtly beautiful. The way that filigree lace and the delicate surface of skin are rendered through the relief and texture contrasts of this mutedly reflective metal is quite different from the bolder, sculpturesque effect at which Wyon aimed in the Una and the Lion coin, struck in highly reflective gold. The crown is analogous to an oil painting; the five-pound piece to a statue.

The gothic crown was struck first in 1847, eleven years after the queen came to the throne, when she was twenty-nine years old. The mintage was limited to 8000. The edge of most specimens bears in raised lower case gothic lettering, interspersed with roses and crowns: ‘decus et tutamen’ (‘an ornament and safeguard’, originally against clipping) ‘anno regni undecimo’. A few coins in the issue, like the specimen illustrated here, have a plain edge. A very small number of proofs was also issued with the date 1853. The 1847 coins had only limited circulation and the perfect preservation of many specimens has produced a strange market in which some collectors will pay prices many times greater than the EF value for specimens with a blue or rainbow-toned mirror finish. In early 2013, a coin with a patchy dark red and blue tarnish, far indeed from Wyon’s intention, and which to an inexpert eye quite spoils the visual impact of the design, was billed as ‘The Most Beautiful of all Gothic Crowns?’ and fetched more than $50,000 (inclusive). Alexander Pope derided pale antiquaries for poring over ‘the sacred rust of twice ten hundred years’. In our postmodern times, it seems, the ‘rust’ of a hundred and sixty years has even more value. The slippage of the word ‘beautiful’ from the design and fabric of the coin to its surface and colour, is amusing. All gothic crowns have the same design, and it is difficult to see how the chance effects of oxidization can make it more ‘beautiful’, except in the most trivial of senses.

The Gothic bust and shield reverse of the crown proved popular, and the basic elements of the design were transferred two years later in 1849 to the first modern florin of two shillings.

This replaced the Gothic lettering with plain capitals, but bears a bust even more delicate and romantically feminine than that of the crown, with a fetching, slightly protruding upper lip. The archaic design was thus paradoxically used as the vehicle of the first step towards modernisation of the coinage. The coins bore the reverse legend ‘ONE FLORIN – ONE TENTH OF A POUND’. The mint can have had little idea that ingrained British conservatism would delay the completion of the planned decimalisation until 1971! In another sign of modernity the ‘D.G.’ claim of divine right was omitted, to the disapproval of religious conservatives. The coin is still primly designated ‘Godless’ in coin catalogues.

In 1851, the year of the Great Exhibition, the archaic script was restored on the new ‘Gothic florin’ (not illustrated here), which showed a simpler version of the shield reverse. The open lipped, girlish look was replaced with an image of regal formality, more appropriate perhaps to a monarch who presided over an international empire, presenting the public face of British imperialism and mercantile expansion. It was minted for the next thirty-six years, the bust becoming severer as the queen aged. In 1887 it was replaced by the ‘Jubilee’ designs, showing a quite different image of the monarch, now sixty-eight years old.

Britannia, a symbol of British success and power, first appeared on a coin issued by Roman emperor Hadrian.

Personifications were the Roman way of giving a face to an idea, place or people. Cultures, cities and kingdoms were usually embodied as females, dressed in and holding items relevant to that particular culture or civilisation.

Egypt was often depicted holding a local musical instrument, the sistrum, on Roman Imperial Coinage. Hispana, or Spain, is depicted with a rabbit at her feet.

The emperor Hadrian’s ‘travels’ coinage displays these fascinating Roman personifications in amazing artistic style. Coins of Hadrian’s ‘travels’ were issued in bronze, brass, silver and gold, for all levels of Roman society to see. This is where Britannia appeared for the first time.

The Britannia of Hadrian’s coinage is a warrior, armed with a spike-tipped shield and a spear, harks back to the fearsome revolt of Boudica around 70 years earlier. She appears solemn, likely due to the construction of Hadrian’s Wall, which was probably intended to put an end to damaging barbarian raids from Scotland. To defeat a weak enemy is easy; there was little glory in that. The Romans preferred to depict their conquered enemies as strong and powerful.

Antoninus Pius, Hadrian’s successor continued to depict Britannia on coinage. While those coins are now much more accessible to the modern collector, it was Commodus that altered the depiction of Britannia on coins.

The power-crazed emperor adopted the title of ‘Britannicus’ in 184 AD, abbreviated as BRIT in much of his coinage issued thereafter. She is shown standing, upright, majestic, holding a sword downward in her right hand and a helmet upright in her left. This is the first time we see Britannia with a helmet, the modern trademark we associate with her today.

It is not until the end of the Third century that the Roman world treats us to the final depiction of Britannia on its coinage.

Carausius’ revolt (286-293 AD) brings us a Late Roman interpretation of Britannia. Carausius, a Roman naval leader gone rogue, made himself emperor of Britain and parts of Northern France. He set about introducing his own coinage during his reign feature the emperor being crowned by a somewhat crude figure of Britannia. She holds Carausius by the hand, welcoming him. Surrounding the scene is the inscription ‘EXPECTATE VENI’ or ‘Come ‘o Awaited One’.

This Sovereign was minted in the second half of Henry’s relatively lengthy reign. In 1526 the value of English gold coins was increased by 10% in order to stop the flow of gold into Europe, and therefore the Sovereign assumed a new value of 22 shillings.

Henry VIII (1526-44), Gold Sovereign, Second Coinage. m.m. lis on obverse, arrow on reverse, henricvs dei gracia rex anglie et franc dns hib, king enthroned holding orb and sceptre, portcullis at feet. Rev. ihesvs avtem transiens per medivm illorvm ibat, square shield over Tudor rose, 15.32g (Schneider 570; N. 1782; S. 2267).
About extremely fine with excellent detail.
A comparable example sold at auction by CNG in New York (January 2018) for $120,000 (approx. £75,000) including buyer’s premium. 

By 1526 Henry was becoming increasingly concerned about the birth of an heir. His wife, Queen Katherine, had borne him six children, but only one of these, Mary, had survived infancy. His eldest son, Henry, born in 1511, had died after only seven weeks. Their last born child died within hours of its birth in November 1518.

By 1526, when Katherine had turned forty, it was evident that Henry would not have a son, and by 1527 Henry had become infatuated with the 25-year old Anne Boleyn, whose elder sister Mary had been Henry’s mistress for some years. At this stage Cardinal Wolsey, on behalf of the king approached Pope Clement VII, asking him to formally annul Henry’s marriage to Katherine.

The matter could not be resolved, Wolsey fell from power and the king’s adviser, Thomas Cromwell, recommended a clean break with Rome, leading to the establishment of the new Church of England, with Henry at its head. The new Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, pronounced in May 1533 that Henry’s marriage to Katherine was void, and he was free to marry Anne.

King Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn 

Henry’s early delight over Anne Boleyn’s pregnancy late in 1532 soon faded when she gave birth to a girl (the future Elizabeth I) in 1533. The relationship soured, and Anne was executed on 19 May 1536. By now, the king had become besotted with Jane Seymour, one of Anne’s ladies-in-waiting, and she gave birth to a boy (the future Edward VI) in 1537. Jane died during childbirth, but she remained the favourite of Henry’s six wives and after his death he was laid beside her in St George’s Chapel, Windsor.

This coin was minted in a period which was one of remarkable change in Europe. Martin Luther began a prolonged attack upon the Papacy and the Catholic Church, and gradually the Protestant religion evolved. In England, Henry VIII seized the opportunity to suppress all the small monasteries on the grounds that they were uneconomic, and on the strength of this he dissolved all the remaining monasteries in 1539.
But despite the turbulence of the times, the reign of Henry VIII produced some of England’s finest Tudor gold coinage.

Types of Coins Coins are made from either precious or base metals. They come in many different monetary denominations, just like today, and they split into two broad types: the older hammered variety and the more modern milled type.

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Hammered coins were made by hand by hitting two dies together with a hammer. On the inside, the dies contained the imprint for each side of the coin. Often the head of the monarch or emperor was on one side. On the other were the coin’s denomination and other designs. The motifs of these coins, especially those from the Greek and Roman world can be nothing less than spectacular. Just like with sculpture, master craftsmen were often employed to engrave dies for Greek cities, resulting in exquisite miniature masterpieces. The hammer-striking process was not an exact science and coins from the ancient and medieval worlds can be somewhat off-centre. This usually adds character to the century-old coins, and also means that no two coins are exactly alike.

Milled coins came about around 400 years ago. They were produced in large quantities from the mid 17th century onwards and are machine made. They have much more precise definition and uniformity. The machining of coins also enabled the introduction of serrated edges and inscriptions which helped prevent forgery and clipping. Mechanised production also came hand-in-hand with improvements in realism and style brought about by the Renaissance two centuries earlier. For the first time rulers of Europe appeared on their coins in spectacular realism.

We’ll come to the condition of the coins you buy later. This is a whole separate subject. Condition is vitally important to the value of the coin.

Coin collectors usually want to collect the coins of one country or group of countries. They might want coins from a particular historical era. Others collect coins that have unusual characteristics. These could be, for example, commemorative sets, or those with errors.

Many collections are based on coins that are similar but have subtly different die patterns. Tokens, used as substitutes for small change in some countries at certain times, are also a highly collectable area.

A common collecting theme is a set series: one coin of each type and denomination for each year the coin was minted during the reign of that particular ruler. This could also include different design variations which might have been introduced. It could include coins struck at different mints. There are many different nuances.

 It makes sense in the first instance to collect and invest in coins of the country where you live, or from a time period which you have a specific interest in. The chances are that you will be more aware of its history and better able to judge what makes a particular coin special.

From a practical standpoint too, for example, it makes sense for a UK collectors and investors to buy British coins, or for US ones to buy American coins. The biggest volume of coin dealing and the largest number of collectors, dealers and investors in this type of coin will be in the home market. The Ancient Coin market, however, is stable and international, with collectors in most countries.

Some coins are indisputably very rare. There are many instances of coins where only a handful of examples are were produced and then a design was discontinued. Proofs and errors – coins made to test a new pattern, or those where some minor production error resulted in an unusual variant of a common coin – are also a fruitful hunting ground for those seeking something scarce for investment purposes.