Free Republic

Dr. Rami Arav... is director of excavation and research at the University of Nebraska at Omaha's Bethsaida Excavations Project, a 24-year effort to uncover the archaeological mysteries of the biblical-era city. The coin, which weighs 7 grams, is 97.6 percent gold, Arav said. The find was unexpected because Bethsaida primarily was home to humble fishermen, he said. Arav said somebody must have been doing good business a little more than 100 years after the birth of Christ. The gold coin, about three-quarters of an inch in diameter, carries the image of Antoninus Pius, the 15th Roman emperor, who reigned between...

One of the largest ever finds of Roman coins in Britain has been made by a man using a metal detector. The hoard of more than 52,000 coins dating from the 3rd Century AD was found buried in a field near Frome in Somerset. The coins were found in a huge jar just over a foot (30cm) below the surface by Dave Crisp, from Devizes in Wiltshire. "I have made many finds over the years, but this is my first major coin hoard," he said. After his metal detector gave a "funny signal", Mr Crisp says he dug down 14in...

$1 coin: Americans have hoarded $1 coins since the early years of the Republic. The first silver dollars minted by the US government in 1794 are rare, so rare that one of them sold for more than $1.2 million this weekend at a Boston auction. And there's a reason for their scarcity: Even back in the first years of the Republic, people hoarded dollar coins rather than spend them. The story goes that on Oct. 15, 1794, chief coiner Henry Voigt coined 1,758 of the silver dollars and delivered them to David Rittenhouse, director of the US Mint, according to...

Archaeologists say they have uncovered the heaviest and most valuable gold coin ever found in Israel. The 2,200-year-old coin weighs an ounce (28 grams) and was found at the Tel Kedesh site near the Lebanon border on June 22, according to Wednesday's statement from the antiquities authority. It said this coin is six times the weight of most others from that era. Donald Ariel, head of the antiquities authority coin department, said the coin dates back to the rule of the Iraq-based Seleucid Empire, though it was minted by the rival Egyptian Ptolemies. Ariel said the coin's image may represent...

Lucky coin? Ever since the 2nd century B.C. -- not long after Romans began minting coins -- shipbuilders have been slipping a coin into the structure of their ships. It's a tradition that continues today. In fact, the USS New York -- made partially from steel recovered from the World Trade Center towers -- did it as well (see "What is Stepping the Mast?"). For the ancient Romans it was likely a continuation of religious customs. Now it's just a tradition and done for good luck. So we didn't find it during the five days we were actually excavating it....

It was only when the coin was later identified as Viking that the game heated up. By then poor Mellegren -- who, Beachcombing must say was someone with a reputation for integrity -- had passed away. Beachcombing has no illusions about much of the nonsense written about pre-Columbian visits to North America. But in this case he would give a thumb and a half followed by two cheers and three quarters. There is a good chance that this really is what it seems: A European coin that found its way to North America in the twelfth century. Minted in Norway,...

A significant archaeological finding, a gold coin, has been reported discovered underwater in the area between Limassol and Larnaca by a local amateur fisherman. According to Cypriot authorities, the coin is of great value. Cypriot media reported that it dates back to the first century A.D. and depicts the third Roman emperor called Caligula, well-known for his fierce and brutal policy during his reign. On this coin, Caligula is sacrificing an animal before the Temple of Augustus, which is constituted by six pillars. Many coins of the same age have been found over the course of time, but this one...

<p>This 1898 Liberty Head Half-Dollar is an example of a coin that received one grade and, upon resubmission, earned a higher grade — and thus a higher market value.</p> <p>CHICAGO (MarketWatch) — Coin dealer James DiGeorgia saw it for just a moment — a rare Roman gold coin he found extremely desirable — but he hesitated before deciding to buy it.</p>

A judge has ruled that ten rare gold coins worth roughly $80 million belong to the U.S. government, not the family that possessed them, according to ABC News. In 2003 Joan Langbord and two other family members opened a safety deposit box that belonged to Langbord’s father, Philadelphia coin dealer Israel Switt, and found the valuable collection. When they asked the Philadelphia Mint to authenticate the find, the coins were apparently seized without compensation and taken to Fort Knox. The 1933 Saint-Gaudens double eagle is “one of the most sought-after rarities in history,” according to Courthouse News. Originally valued at...

<p>A Northern California couple out walking their dog on their property stumbled across a modern-day bonanza: $10 million in rare, mint-condition gold coins buried in the shadow of an old tree.</p> <p>Nearly all of the 1,427 coins, dating from 1847 to 1894, are in uncirculated, mint condition, said David Hall, co-founder of Professional Coin Grading Service of Santa Ana, which recently authenticated them. Although the face value of the gold pieces only adds up to about $27,000, some of them are so rare that coin experts say they could fetch nearly $1 million apiece.</p>

Index fund provider ETF Securities has teamed up with Government-owned coin maker Royal Mint to offer investors with shares in its leading exchange traded fund ETFS Physical Gold the option of cashing in shares for physical bullion coins. Exchange traded funds have mushroomed in recent years as a highly popular way for private investors to own gold. Real holdings of gold, stored in bank vaults, are represented by shares which trade daily on the London Stock Exchange. This makes it possible for investors to buy and sell cheaply – and in relatively small quantities. Investors can choose to receive Britannias...

The peace we think we have is only an interregnum before another cycle of conflict ~ Robert Kaplan, The Coming Anarchy, 2000Respected American journalist and foreign correspondent Robert Kaplan’s quote is poignantly foreshadowing, being published when the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) were winding down from the most onerous of the Balkan operations in Bosnia and Kosovo, yet before being thrust into Afghanistan. As Western nations look beyond our current combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, questions arise regarding the reconstitution of our military forces. This is not a particularly new practice; peacetime armies have traditionally faced budget cuts and down-sizing,...

A joint expedition of scientists led by Chapurukha M. Kusimba of The Field Museum and Sloan R. Williams of the University of Illinois at Chicago has unearthed a 600-year-old Chinese coin on the Kenyan island of Manda that shows trade existed between China and east Africa decades before European explorers set sail and changed the map of the world. The coin, a small disk of copper and silver with a square hole in the center so it could be worn on a belt, is called "Yongle Tongbao" and was issued by Emperor Yongle who reigned from 1403-1425AD during the Ming...

An incredibly rare Roman coin discovered in Acle has been donated to Norwich Castle Museum. The coin -- only the second of its kind known in the world -- was unearthed by Dave Clarke during the Springfield archaeology dig last summer. Acle Parish Council has sent the ancient artefact to Norwich where it may go on display and will be used by experts to identify and date other coins. The coin dates from AD 312 when Emperor Constantine I ruled the Roman world. The only other example was found in the 18th Century and is on show in Lisbon. One...

RICHMOND, Va. A humble 5-cent coin with a storied past is headed to auction and bidding is expected to top $2 million a century after it was mysteriously minted. The 1913 Liberty Head nickel is one of only five known to exist, but it's the coin's back story that adds to its cachet: It was surreptitiously and illegally cast, discovered in a car wreck that killed its owner, declared a fake, forgotten in a closet for decades and then found to be the real deal. It all adds up to an expected sale of $2.5 million or more when it...

At long last, a stupid, as well as illegal idea dies on the vine. Bloomberg reports

If Barack Obama can "solve" the debt ceiling crisis by printing up some trillion dollar coins, then why does the federal government need our money? As another debt ceiling showdown approaches, many in the liberal media are suggesting that if Congress does not raise the debt ceiling that Obama should just have the U.S. Treasury create a trillion dollar platinum coin and use it to pay our bills. It sounds crazy, but many notable voices (including Paul Krugman of the New York Times) are supporting this idea. But if the federal government has had the power to create trillion...

What if the threat of a voluntary default by the United States could be erased by simply turning one tiny scrap of platinum into a coin? That's right. No debt ceiling problem. No bickering in Congress. No market jitters. The only thing needed is for the Treasury Department to mint a platinum coin with a face value of $1 trillion. Of course, this is not going to happen. Creating money out of thin air is hardly a solution. It could lead to even more concerns from those worried about inflation. Critics of the Federal Reserve's monetary easing programs would likely...

Welcome to Zimbabwe.  This is not a parody -- it is an actual report from the Washington Post:   Some economists and legal scholars have suggested that the “platinum coin option” is one way to defuse a crisis if Congress can’t or won’t lift the debt ceiling soon. At least in theory. The U.S. government is, after all, facing a real problem. The Treasury Department will hit its $16.4 trillion borrowing limit by next February at the latest. Unless Congress reaches an agreement to raise that borrowing limit, the government will no longer be able to borrow enough money...

This post is written in anger and frustration. Angry that we continue to follow the Republican Party’s elite ignorance. A party that continues to pull defeat from the jaws of victory characterized by pompous fools who fulfill the sterotype built by the left. Frustrated that the reality of politics is this: There will be no third party capable of competing with the coalition constructed by the dems. As a result, true conservatives MUST take steps to irradicate the ignorance of the Republican Party while still adhering to the core values of our forefathers (beliefs that I discovered are considered extreme...