A summary of the recent Memorandum of Understanding signed between the United States and China.

By Peter K. Tompa from the Ancient Coin Collectors Guild

The State Department recently announced import restrictions on a wide array of Chinese cultural artifacts, including some coins. The Chinese restrictions specifically cover archaeological materials representing China’s cultural heritage from the Paleolithic Period (c. 75,000 B.C.) through the end of the Tang Period (A.D. 907) and irreplaceable monumental sculpture and wall art at least 250 years old. While broad, the restrictions are nowhere near as extensive as China’s original request which purportedly sought restrictions on artifacts made as recently as 1911.

Under the provision, restricted artifacts must be accompanied upon entry into the US with either a valid Chinese export certificate or certifications indicating that the artifact in question left China before the effective date of the restrictions, January 16, 2009.

The Federal Register has listed the coin types impacted as follows:

a. Zhou Media of Exchange and Tool-shaped Coins: Early media of exchange include bronze spades, bronze knives, and cowrie shells. During the 6th century BC, flat, simplified, and standardized cast bronze versions of spades appear and these constitute China’s first coins. Other coin shapes appear in bronze including knives and cowrie shells. These early coins may bear inscriptions.

b. Later, tool-shaped coins began to be replaced by disc-shaped ones which are also cast in bronze and marked with inscriptions. These coins have a central round or square hole. (more…)

A historic gold coin believed to have been found by a King’s Lynn road worker has sold for nearly £20,000.

The road worker’s daughter found it in his possessions after he died and took it to an auction- house valuation day in the town in November.

The Western European Solidus coin is slightly larger than a 20p piece and is thought to date from around 830 to 850 AD.

It is believed it would have found its way to Anglo-Saxon England through trade.

A spokesman for Lockdales, the Ipswich-based auctioneers which sold the coin, said: “The owners of the coin had no idea that it might be of any significant value, as it was kept with a few other coins of minimal value.

“They had nothing else to do on the day of our valuation day and brought it in on the off-chance that it might be of interest, but they had no expectations.

“We knew it was something important as soon as we saw it.  “The owners agreed to put the coin up for auction and we set about researching it.”

The coin was given a guide price of between £5,000 and £10,000 but the new owners paid a total of £19,346 at the auction at the weekend.

The largest hoard of prehistoric gold coins in Britain in modern times has been discovered by a metal detectorist in East Anglia.

The 824 gold staters, worth the modern equivalent of up to £1m when they were in circulation, were in a field near Wickham Market, Suffolk, (an area once on the southern fringe of Icenian territory, near its border with the Trinovantian tribal kingdom) . Almost all the coins were minted by royal predecessors of Boudicca, the warrior queen of the Iceni tribe who revolted against Rome in AD 60.

The solid gold staters – each weighing just over 5g – were made between 40BC and AD 15, most of them in the final 35 years of that period. They were buried in a plain pottery vessel, possibly inside a rectilinear religious compound, between 15 and AD 20.

Jude Plouviez, of the Suffolk County Council Archaeological Service, said their value when in circulation had been estimated at a modern equivalent of between £500,000 and £1m, but they were likely to be worth less than that now.

“It’s a good, exciting find. It gives us a lot of new information about the late Iron Age, and particularly East Anglia in the late Iron Age. The discovery is important because it highlights the probable political, economic and religious importance of an area. It certainly suggests there was a significant settlement nearby.” she said.

Ms Plouviez said the find was the largest collection of Iron Age gold coins found in Britain since 1849, when a farm worker unearthed between 800 and 2,000 gold staters in a field near Milton Keynes (more…)