My son has come clipped pieces of eight, chop marked Chinese coins and a few old silvers with holes drilled through them.
He also has an ancient Greek coin that is dated around 400 BC. Blows my mind thinking about how many transactions that thing went through and who was trading it and what they were buying.
Maybe Alexander the Great used it
how did they know to date the coin 400 bc
If it says '400 BC' on the coin, you've been hustled.
” Blows my mind thinking about how many transactions that thing went through and who was trading it and what they were buying.”
Probably not as many as you’d think. One of the reasons we don’t see a lot of old coins is at some point in their existence the metal was worth more than the stated value and the coin was melted down and turned into something else. Usually in large batches. The reason we find these coins today is because they got “lost” or saved in a sock and forgotten. My Dad found a Roman coin on the ground while in Sweden in the seventies. Pretty sure at some point is was worth more as a metal arrow head than as a Roman coin.
Yeah, the continuous use of coins is the reason so many of them still exist. Coins went from hand to hand to hand, and given that populations were smaller then, it’s not unlikely that the ancient coin was literally touched by one of your ancestors. There’s no way to know of course.
There are probably coins and other valuable items on all or most deep sea ancient wrecks, conveniently concealed in a pottery jar, jug, or pot with a lid.