by Leon F McClellan as published on columnarios.com

Have you ever wondered why a United States quarter-dollar is called “two-bits”? Or, a half-dollar “four-bits”? Do you know why we call our basic monetary unit “dollar” instead of something else?

Two-bits, four-bits, six-bits and eight-bits make reference to the eight-reales silver coin of New Spain and Mexico. It is also called piece of eight and circulated in the English Colonies and freely in the USA following the Revolutionary War. As a matter of fact, the eight-reales coin was legal tender in the United States until 1857 and was the world’s most used coin at one time. It is the renowned piece of eight that became part of the Spanish Main pirate lore.

The coins minted until 1734 technically, are called a cob coins, because they were originally made by hand stamping “tail ends of bars” or “cabos de barra”, which were sliced as planchets from rudely cast, more or less round, bullion bars which were assayed and carefully weighed. “Cabo” might well have given us the name of cob, although it does mean a lump or small mass (as of coal). The second definition comes from the Dutch “kubb”.

Cob coinage was made at the first mint in the Americas in Mexico City, established in 1535. Authorized by a Spanish Royal Decree dated 14 September 1519 to melt, cast, mark and put aside the royal-fifth of the gold and silver being collected from the Aztecs in Mexico City (Tenochtitlan). He used the palace of Axay catl (father of Moctezuma II) for the task. This may be considered the first foundry of New Spain and of all North America.

When Cortes moved into a home in 1521 in what is today the Mexico City suburb of Coyoacn, he established the second foundry in order to meet the demand for currency and produced “more than 130,000 castellanos”, according to information in documents collected by Francisco Antonio de Lorenzana. “Castellano” (Castilian) was the current coin of the time. These were the first cobs of the New World. The royal fifth was faithfully sent to Spain in the Spanish galleons.

When the Viceroyalty of New Spain was established by Spanish Royal Decree signed by the Queen of Spain the 11th of May of 1535, the Casa de Moneda (house of coin or mint) was formally established. Beginning sometime in April of 1536, according to the best estimates, the first mint of the Americas started coining operations.

Cobs did not start pouring-out into world marketplaces until the reign of Phillip II, after 1556. These crudely minted reales (literally, royals) of silver were undated until 1580 when some were and others were not marked with the year of coinage. The first pieces of eight were struck in Spain, as early as 1497, although it was not until after 1572 that the Casa de Moneda in Mexico City struck them. Before that time, only denominations smaller than eight-reales were struck in Mexico. (more…)

by Cole Schenewerk from the California Numismatist Magazine

Every coin tells a story. Coins can tell stories of love, greed, hate, and many other things. Anyone who collects coins can do a little research and bring these stories to light. Ancient coins tell especially amazing stories. The paragraphs below tell of two coins that I earned through the ANA’s David R. Cervin Ancient Coin Project and the story that they tell.

I recently acquired a Septimius Severus Silver Denarius through the ANA’s David R. Cervin Ancient Coin Project. I researched the coin recently and I found out many interesting things. The coin told a story that encompassed a whole era of Roman History.

In my research, I discovered that the emperor that is depicted on the obverse and the reverse of the coin, Septimius Severus, is one of the greatest Roman Emperors of all time. His full name is Imperator Caesar Lucius Septimius Severus Pertinax Augustus Arabicus, Adiabenicus, Pius, Parthicus Maximus, Britannicus Maximus.

These titles came from a variety of sources: “Arabicus”- Meaning Arab, refers to place of birth, “Adiabenicus”- referring to one of the peoples that Severus conquered, “Pius”- meaning humble, “Parthicus Maximus”- meaning greatest Parthian, “Britannicus Maximus”-meaning greatest Briton.

He ascended to the throne through the murder and defeat of his political rivals. This took some time, but when he succeeded, Severus held a fi rm grip on the empire and conquered many lands. He had two sons, Caracalla and Geta. Caracalla was notoriously cruel and was known for murdering his brother, wife, and father-in-law in A.D. 211. But aside from all this bloodshed, Caracalla also made his own contribution to numismatics. He instituted a new denomination of coins in the Roman Empire, the antoninianus.

This coin is believed to have been valued at twice that of a denarius, but its metal content at the time of its institution was only 1.5 times that of a denarius. To add to this, the metals were gradually debased after that to a point where the denarii were hoarded because the coins that were said by the government to be worth twice as much were actually worth less. The metal content of the antoninianus was debased because of the lack of silver and gold coming into Rome from its dominions. The government still needed to bankroll its large army and had to make more coins with a debased metal content to continue paying its troops, which were guarding the empire from invaders along the borders. When the general public found out about the debasement of the coins, a period of hyperinfl ation occurred. This continued until the monetary reforms of Diocletian, when the economy was stabilized. Diocletian completely reorganized the monetary system, creating new denominations and values for Roman Currency. (more…)

Japan’s money economy began earlier than textbooks have described when archaeologists unveiled 33 bronze coins from the late seventh century unearthed in the village of Asuka, Nara Prefecture in 1998.

Now ten years latter, Nine Fuhonsen coins, which are thought to be the nation’s oldest form of minted currency, unearthed at a former site of Fujiwarakyu, the ancient capital from 694 to 710, in Kashihara, Nara Prefecture, differ slightly from previously discovered Fuhonsen coins, the Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties

The finding suggests there may have been another mint in addtion to one discovered at Asukaike ruin in Asukamura.

Minor differences were found in the kanji character “Fu” used on the surface of the coins and a thicker frame surrounding a square hole in the center of the coins. The materials of four of the coins included arsenic and bismuth, and very pure copper.

The coins discovered in August 1998 at the Asukaike Ruins in Asuka, are older than the Wado Kaichin coins first minted in 708, thus bumping them from the archaeological record books as the nation’s first circulated money.

The bronze coins, whose existence has been known for some time, are called Fuhonsen, the name of a charm believed used during the Nara Period (710-784). (more…)

Croesus of Lydia was responsible for one of the greatest innovations in coinage, but he did not invent coinage itself, an act with which he is often credited. If we assume that coinage was invented in 650 B.C. (of course we know it was only approximate), we take Croesus’ accession as 561 B.C., and then we relate Croesus’ times to our times in 2001, then on a relative basis, coinage would have been invented in 1907 during the presidency of Teddy Roosevelt. What Croesus was responsible for was the introduction of pure gold and pure silver as coinage metals (instead of electrum) and the invention of the first bi-metallic interrelated coinage system in the Greek world with denominations going from 10.75 gram gold and silver staters to fractions weighing as little as 0.36 grams in gold and silver. Croesus’ coinage type is familiar to most of us: a bellowing lion facing a seemingly placid bull. It seems that a fair amount of experimentation was done before final types were settled on, and I would not be surprised if more prototypes than I have identified yet exist in the earth or may have existed but not survived.

The earliest prototype in the Croesus series is a heavy gold stater (#120/1) of which I have owned two examples. It is such a perfect missing link that I would have been fearful of it had I not discovered a worn example in the Ashmolean Museum collection, placed there almost 100 years ago. In a way the Ashmolean specimen has been a negative for me personally as dealers in Europe and the U.S. have plagerized this idea by quoting the Ashmolean and stating, “Like Ashmolean must be the earliest Creosus gold Stater”. The prototype is of somewhat rough, crude style with the lion in a stretched, leaping position resembling the silver staters of Caria which had been found in hoards with coins of Croesus. The bull has a head similar to that of an Uncertain Ionian silver tetrobol (Rosen 376). The crowning glory that establishes this missing link is the fact that the lion has a wart on the bridge of the nose, just like the 1/3 staters of Lydia that preceded the coinage of Croesus. It is important to note that on the prototype piece the protomes are extremely animated in lifelike poses. On the regular issues (#120/2), while the protomes are well done, they are somewhat immobile and the front leg of the lion, as well as the front leg of the bull, are rather stiff acting like pedestals. (more…)