>A hoard of Norman-era silver coins unearthed five years ago in southwestern England has become Britain’s most valuable treasure find ever, after it was bought for £4.3 million ($5.6 million) by a local heritage trust.
Different article about the discovery of the Sutton Hoo treasure...
>The exact value of the Sutton Hoo treasure isn't widely known, in part because the items in the treasure have never been up for sale. They were donated to the British Museum by Edith, and have remained there ever since. Typically, the items are described as "priceless," suggesting that their value to the museum and as historical artifacts makes them incredibly valuable.
>Given their historical significance, it's easy to imagine that the value of the items in the treasure would be valued in tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars.
The article's image of the hoard shows, off to the sides, various coins that look sliced in half. Did this modification occur to coins during this time period? Did the coins remain valid but half their value? If so, how many times could a coin be subdivided?
Coins used to be largely worth what they were worth because of what they were made of. So cutting them in half would lead to two seperate halves of the value. I'm sure there's more nuance than that but broadly I think that's how it used to work.
I'm sure there are portion of us for whom this treasure trove recalls fond childhood memories of reading Dahl's short story The Mildenhall Treasure, a creative account of real events in 1942 surrounding the controversial finding of a huge cache of 4th century Roman silverware - one of the other great historical hoards dug up in modern Britain.
One wonders if they are worth face value given inflation. It would be a fun exercise to figure out their value in pounds sterling and then calculate what that number would be in the present.
That said, my kids and I buried 50 copper coins in a forest in the sierras, perhaps a thousand years from now the aliens visiting our dead planet will find them. :-(
It's have to be deflation for them to be worth more. The only thing here that would be the equivalent would be the value of the silver. I'm _guessing_ that the silver is worth like 1% of the valuation (from looking at the photos). Doesn't seem like it's 2500 kilos of silver (~$1100 per kg at current prices)!
>The only thing here that would be the equivalent would be the value of the silver
Not necessarily. A lot more silver has been mined since the Norman Conquest (for example in the New World, but also in the Old World) which increases its supply. The demand for and utility of silver in general has also changed since then.
Have you done any comparative economics? That is where you take what it "cost" in terms of money for goods or services at a given time and compare that to the cost of the same (or equivalent) goods and services in the present time. Some things like property ownership won't work because the rules changed so much between then and now but meals? Etc? might work.
Picking the 'BigMac index' might be fun, ie you try to price a Big Mac. (Since the Big Mac doesn't contain any tomatoes, you could probably have made a reasonable Big Mac clone in the Middle Ages.)
It gets ridiculous, if you go by the price of eg the amount of computation a human can do in a year. Or 'ice cubes in the height of summer'.
> perhaps a thousand years from now the aliens visiting our dead planet will find them. :-(
aliens will likely find us the same way we find dinosaurs but probably no one will find us. 1000 years from now things will be very different but i suspect humans will still exist. imo we as a species have very little chance of living 1M years, tho.
You’d be surprised! It’s all about supply and demand. You can get very common Ancient Greek coins from 300 BC (eg ~2300 years old) for $50 these days. For example:
Yes, exactly. Relative to roman coins there are much rarer limited run coins or accidents that have a lot of value now. But there are also rare-ish coins that no one cares about, like things minted specifically for collectability, say some hypothetical, commemorative Princess Diana coin that got made and marketed to rip people off who bought into the idea it would gain value.
I believe every country has a business like that nowadays, or a side-business from the official Mint that makes coins. And it's not even about whether it would appreciate in value tbh, they are a good medium for collecting and encoding important events or celebrating something.
Do you have a coin shop in your town? If you do they tend to have a bit of everything (though most likely a focus on coins from the country you live in) and should have a few moderately priced ancient coins to choose from.
If you want to be sure it's legit, try the site vcoins - they have a good selection of shops specializing in ancient greek coinage, and they have a good reputation for vetting.
Is there any particular city state / public person your friend is fond of? I'd plug that in their search bar and see what comes up.
I understand rarity and all, but it's still strange that there are US pennies worth far more than these coins. It makes sense, but instinctively feels wrong.
I think it's one of those things where people love US pennies because it's what they know and or grew up with (and possibly got them into collecting) - at least in the US. I always got the impression that collecting ancient coins like this was much less mainstream than people collecting the coins of the country that they currently live in.
> the tendency for wages in jobs that have experienced little or no increase in labor productivity to rise in response to rising wages in other jobs that did experience high productivity growth. In turn, these sectors of the economy become more expensive over time, because their input costs increase while productivity does not. Typically, this affects services more than manufactured goods, and in particular health, education, arts and culture.
I don't think so - hoards like this tend to get found often enough and as far as I know the market for these sorts of coins hasn't cratered in recent times.
I presume they would come with a certificate of authenticity from a respectable source. Also, it's not in the interest of an auction house to sell fake coins. I'd be much more skeptical if it was on ebay.
You used to be able to get uncleaned late Roman bronze coins from the Balkans for about a buck apiece in the early 2000s, so I’d guess they’d be maybe $3-5 each now. Then you get the fun of very carefully removing the encrustations to reveal the coin underneath. You generally ended up with a coin worth about what you paid for it, but it was fun.
I was similarly surprised recently when I found out you can legally purchase many ancient artifacts, like lamps, seals, and burial items. They're by no means cheap, but they aren't priceless treasures either. We've always mass produced stuff, and the museums aren't interested in most of it.
Supply and demand. In Europe or Asia it is very normal to find Gold or Silver coins, because they are Noble or semiNoble materials and do not degrade, or do it very little. For archeologists is not very valuable.
What is really precious for History is finding materials that usually degrade like cloth or wood or iron things from thousands of years ago.
An archeologist that finds a gold coin is like: Meh. if he finds wood from +2000 years, it will change her life. You will see her celebrating like an Athlete winning the olympics.
> For the group of seven metal detectorists who discovered the 2,584 silver pennies in the Chew Valley area, about 11 miles south of the city of Bristol, it marks a lucrative windfall since they will pocket half that sum. The landowner on whose property the coins were found will receive the other half.
I'm curious how this arrangement came about; is it mandated by law? Negotiated on a case-by-case basis? Is 50/50 the "standard" split?
Firstly, the UK is three separate legal jurisdictions, each with their own rules on metal detecting: England/Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland.
Secondly, these rules are not binary legal/illegal, but on a continuum of permissiveness. You always need some kind of permission. England/Wales is more permissive (where most non-protected land can be detected on with the landowner's permission) than the Republic of Ireland (where you need state approval to use a metal detector anywhere).
"It illegal to use a detection device to search for archaeological objects anywhere within the State or its territorial seas; without the prior written consent of the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht"
That, to me, implies there's a lot of unfound treasures over there... and/or a lot of illegal searching. Assuming there's interest outside of archeological value, of course.
Most countries have similar rules, and that's also the standard (rarely prosecuted) view in international law. The general rule of thumb is that antiquities belong to the state, anything else (like treasure hoards in the UK) is an atypical exception.
Yes, obviously it's legal in England, or the coins wouldn't have been found, reported, and ultimately sold, as per the article. It's also legal in Ireland.
There are prohibitions and licensing requirements in both countries for search of heritage sites, national monuments, and other protected sites, and reporting requirements for unintentional "heritage" finds.
From the article...
>A hoard of Norman-era silver coins unearthed five years ago in southwestern England has become Britain’s most valuable treasure find ever, after it was bought for £4.3 million ($5.6 million) by a local heritage trust.
Different article about the discovery of the Sutton Hoo treasure...
>The exact value of the Sutton Hoo treasure isn't widely known, in part because the items in the treasure have never been up for sale. They were donated to the British Museum by Edith, and have remained there ever since. Typically, the items are described as "priceless," suggesting that their value to the museum and as historical artifacts makes them incredibly valuable.
>Given their historical significance, it's easy to imagine that the value of the items in the treasure would be valued in tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars.
One of the Lewis Chessmen is in private hands and was recently sold for £735,000!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_chessmen
The article's image of the hoard shows, off to the sides, various coins that look sliced in half. Did this modification occur to coins during this time period? Did the coins remain valid but half their value? If so, how many times could a coin be subdivided?
Coins used to be largely worth what they were worth because of what they were made of. So cutting them in half would lead to two seperate halves of the value. I'm sure there's more nuance than that but broadly I think that's how it used to work.
I'm sure there are portion of us for whom this treasure trove recalls fond childhood memories of reading Dahl's short story The Mildenhall Treasure, a creative account of real events in 1942 surrounding the controversial finding of a huge cache of 4th century Roman silverware - one of the other great historical hoards dug up in modern Britain.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mildenhall_Treasure
One wonders if they are worth face value given inflation. It would be a fun exercise to figure out their value in pounds sterling and then calculate what that number would be in the present.
That said, my kids and I buried 50 copper coins in a forest in the sierras, perhaps a thousand years from now the aliens visiting our dead planet will find them. :-(
It's have to be deflation for them to be worth more. The only thing here that would be the equivalent would be the value of the silver. I'm _guessing_ that the silver is worth like 1% of the valuation (from looking at the photos). Doesn't seem like it's 2500 kilos of silver (~$1100 per kg at current prices)!
>The only thing here that would be the equivalent would be the value of the silver
Not necessarily. A lot more silver has been mined since the Norman Conquest (for example in the New World, but also in the Old World) which increases its supply. The demand for and utility of silver in general has also changed since then.
Have you done any comparative economics? That is where you take what it "cost" in terms of money for goods or services at a given time and compare that to the cost of the same (or equivalent) goods and services in the present time. Some things like property ownership won't work because the rules changed so much between then and now but meals? Etc? might work.
It depends a lot on the basket you are choosing.
Picking the 'BigMac index' might be fun, ie you try to price a Big Mac. (Since the Big Mac doesn't contain any tomatoes, you could probably have made a reasonable Big Mac clone in the Middle Ages.)
It gets ridiculous, if you go by the price of eg the amount of computation a human can do in a year. Or 'ice cubes in the height of summer'.
The sesame seeds in the bun would be a trade good. And there are tomatoes in the special sauce.
> perhaps a thousand years from now the aliens visiting our dead planet will find them. :-(
aliens will likely find us the same way we find dinosaurs but probably no one will find us. 1000 years from now things will be very different but i suspect humans will still exist. imo we as a species have very little chance of living 1M years, tho.
Change is perhaps accelerating, especially since the invention of agriculture, writing and more recently the Industrial Revolution.
Eg nowadays almost everyone has the 'modern overbite', ie the top front teeth extend in front of the bottom front teeth.
See eg https://nextnature.org/en/magazine/story/2013/did-forks-real...
The article explicitly blames forks, but people in Song China had a modern overbite long before Europeans invented forks. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overbite#Changing_human_dentit... and https://petermorwood.tumblr.com/post/181554755777/deadcatwit...
Why would our planet be dead in 1000 years? And why did you decide to have children if you believe that?
That's a bit of a reach. Nihilism / pessimism about the far future doesn't mean people just give up their current life.
Just how long are you expecting their children to live?
A thousand year old coin for $1000? That seems rather cheap.
(Professional coin nerd here)
You’d be surprised! It’s all about supply and demand. You can get very common Ancient Greek coins from 300 BC (eg ~2300 years old) for $50 these days. For example:
https://coins.ha.com/itm/ancients/greek/ancients-phoenicia-s...
Of course you can also get rare ones for $thousands or $millions. All about who cares and how many there are.
Yes, exactly. Relative to roman coins there are much rarer limited run coins or accidents that have a lot of value now. But there are also rare-ish coins that no one cares about, like things minted specifically for collectability, say some hypothetical, commemorative Princess Diana coin that got made and marketed to rip people off who bought into the idea it would gain value.
The Franklin Mint had a huge business in this kind of stuff.
I believe every country has a business like that nowadays, or a side-business from the official Mint that makes coins. And it's not even about whether it would appreciate in value tbh, they are a good medium for collecting and encoding important events or celebrating something.
If I was looking for one of those coins as a gift for a friend who is very into ancient Greece, where would I go?
Bearing in mind that I know nothing about ancient Greece and coins in equal parts.
Do you have a coin shop in your town? If you do they tend to have a bit of everything (though most likely a focus on coins from the country you live in) and should have a few moderately priced ancient coins to choose from.
If you want to be sure it's legit, try the site vcoins - they have a good selection of shops specializing in ancient greek coinage, and they have a good reputation for vetting.
Is there any particular city state / public person your friend is fond of? I'd plug that in their search bar and see what comes up.
I understand rarity and all, but it's still strange that there are US pennies worth far more than these coins. It makes sense, but instinctively feels wrong.
I think it's one of those things where people love US pennies because it's what they know and or grew up with (and possibly got them into collecting) - at least in the US. I always got the impression that collecting ancient coins like this was much less mainstream than people collecting the coins of the country that they currently live in.
Even in antiquity Lebanese currency is worthless...
wonder how much that coin is worth now vs how much it was worth in 300 Bc
Prices in Ancient Greece in Athens in the 5th century BC
1 loaf of bread 1 obolos
The standard rate for a prostitute 3 oboloi
6 oboloi are 1 drahma, about 4 drahmai to the shekel. That coin is 1/16 shekel, so about 1.5 loaves
Either bread was expensive or hookers cheap.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect
> the tendency for wages in jobs that have experienced little or no increase in labor productivity to rise in response to rising wages in other jobs that did experience high productivity growth. In turn, these sectors of the economy become more expensive over time, because their input costs increase while productivity does not. Typically, this affects services more than manufactured goods, and in particular health, education, arts and culture.
Or half a hooker...
Yes, but which half ?
Will the number of coins in the OP cause prices to drop?
I don't think so - hoards like this tend to get found often enough and as far as I know the market for these sorts of coins hasn't cratered in recent times.
How do you know if these coins are legit?
I presume they would come with a certificate of authenticity from a respectable source. Also, it's not in the interest of an auction house to sell fake coins. I'd be much more skeptical if it was on ebay.
You used to be able to get uncleaned late Roman bronze coins from the Balkans for about a buck apiece in the early 2000s, so I’d guess they’d be maybe $3-5 each now. Then you get the fun of very carefully removing the encrustations to reveal the coin underneath. You generally ended up with a coin worth about what you paid for it, but it was fun.
You still can. The Balkans is pretty widely known as a major center for trafficking looted antiquities, including coins.
I was similarly surprised recently when I found out you can legally purchase many ancient artifacts, like lamps, seals, and burial items. They're by no means cheap, but they aren't priceless treasures either. We've always mass produced stuff, and the museums aren't interested in most of it.
Trash is cheap
Supply and demand. In Europe or Asia it is very normal to find Gold or Silver coins, because they are Noble or semiNoble materials and do not degrade, or do it very little. For archeologists is not very valuable.
What is really precious for History is finding materials that usually degrade like cloth or wood or iron things from thousands of years ago.
An archeologist that finds a gold coin is like: Meh. if he finds wood from +2000 years, it will change her life. You will see her celebrating like an Athlete winning the olympics.
> For the group of seven metal detectorists who discovered the 2,584 silver pennies in the Chew Valley area, about 11 miles south of the city of Bristol, it marks a lucrative windfall since they will pocket half that sum. The landowner on whose property the coins were found will receive the other half.
I'm curious how this arrangement came about; is it mandated by law? Negotiated on a case-by-case basis? Is 50/50 the "standard" split?
Yes, it's enshrined in UK law so that museums get opportunity to buy detectorists' finds. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_Act_1996
So metal detection to search for historical artifacts is legal in UK, illegal in Ireland?
It's more complex than that.
Firstly, the UK is three separate legal jurisdictions, each with their own rules on metal detecting: England/Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland.
Secondly, these rules are not binary legal/illegal, but on a continuum of permissiveness. You always need some kind of permission. England/Wales is more permissive (where most non-protected land can be detected on with the landowner's permission) than the Republic of Ireland (where you need state approval to use a metal detector anywhere).
Some of the details here: https://detecthistory.com/metal-detecting/uk/
Certain artifacts are "treasure" regardless of how you find them: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/thousands-more-treasures-...
Is there any place where metal detection to search for historical artefacts is illegal on private land?
Ireland
"It illegal to use a detection device to search for archaeological objects anywhere within the State or its territorial seas; without the prior written consent of the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht"
(Note "anywhere")
https://www.museum.ie/en-ie/collections-research/the-law-on-...
That, to me, implies there's a lot of unfound treasures over there... and/or a lot of illegal searching. Assuming there's interest outside of archeological value, of course.
Most countries have similar rules, and that's also the standard (rarely prosecuted) view in international law. The general rule of thumb is that antiquities belong to the state, anything else (like treasure hoards in the UK) is an atypical exception.
iirc, it is forbidden in Sweden, except if you secure government permission.
I don't know the laws personally, but different nations often have different laws.
Yes, obviously it's legal in England, or the coins wouldn't have been found, reported, and ultimately sold, as per the article. It's also legal in Ireland.
There are prohibitions and licensing requirements in both countries for search of heritage sites, national monuments, and other protected sites, and reporting requirements for unintentional "heritage" finds.
Obligatory mention: TV series Detectorists [0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detectorists