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Getting the best deal for your coins when it’s time to sell
The first actual coinage as we know it today dates back to the Lydian civilization of about 650 BC. The coins were really nothing more than crude, preweighed pieces of silver, electrum, or gold, stamped with a punch by the king who made them. Soon thereafter, dies were invented that were fancy enough to identify the king who issued the coin and the value that each coin carried in trade.
Formally called coins at this point, those that were available in quantity and found to be reliable in their weight and purity became acceptable to all who traded them. These so-called trade coins started the use of coinage in commerce as we know it today. The trading efficiencies that coins afforded over barter were so great and so obvious that all those in economic power copied the idea to benefit themselves and their own people.
Countless rulers made huge quantities of coins, after which barter became the second-favorite way to trade. Trading with coins and exchanging coins of one country for those of another became a profession. (The traders were the moneychangers and, later, the first bankers.)
B.C: BEFORE COINS
Before the invention of coins, most commerce was done in trade, by bartering. Every time one man wanted to trade the extra goods he had for the goods he needed, he had to set a rate of exchange for every item he traded with every one of his trading partners every time they met. How much cauliflower for how much salt? How many sheep for a cow? What to pay to the chief in return for his protection?
This cumbersome process was probably confusing and time-consuming, and no doubt dreadfully inefficient and very stressful. It probably led to heated arguments and maybe even fights. One man wants to trade a cow for some sheep, but the guy with the sheep wants a horse. The fellow with the food already has water and three daughters, but he’s willing to trade for husbands for his daughters or for wine or axes. But the guy who makes ax heads doesn’t feel well, so there’s a shortage of his fine product. The chief wants his taxes in arrowheads, axes, and knives, probably not daughters. And so it went. Trade, although necessary, was barely productive and definitely not fun.
Out of this carousal of chaos in the barter economy came the first standards of trade. A standard in trade is an item that everyone who trades agrees has a value against which everything else can be judged and then traded. Objects used in this way have included iron bars, seashells (in inland areas where seashells weren’t found), animals, beads, grain, salt, obsidian (volcanic glass), stone arrowheads, and knives, and bone fishhooks. Standards of trade slightly simplified the trading process into a productive and at least somewhat social event.
Next came man's discovery of metal in a natural state. The first of these metals was iron (from meteorites), followed by copper, gold, and silver. These metals were desirable not just because they were great for making tools, but also because of their beauty. Over time, the metals became the most acceptable items for exchange. A man could sell his cow for gold and have something to trade for food the next month. For the most part, these metals were small and convenient to carry and store, making for the first universal medium of exchange.
Still, during each trade, the amount of each metal varied in weight and in pureness. To solve this problem, the natural solution was weighing and marking the value on each piece. Eventually, the local chief took to marking each unit with its value and assigning his mark, indicating its acceptability in trade. Trade expanded to include metal arrowheads, knife blades, and even nails, the direct ancestors of coins as we know them today.
Since the earliest days of coins, tens of thousands of princes, kings, and emperors, as well as an untold number of cities, states, kingdoms, and empires around the world, manufactured coins. Many of them have vanished. But before they disappeared, they minted and issued multiple millions of coins in hundreds of thousands of designs, sizes, denominations, and metals, leaving them for us to find. In fact there are empires that did exist that have only been discovered and identified due to the coinage left behind. The first coin collector undoubtedly appeared along with the first coin. And collecting coins became a social event, as much fun then as it is today.
On Your Mark, Get Set, Go: Starting Your Coin Collection
Coins have been collected by everyone from Roman emperors (Julius Caesar and Trajan) to U.S. presidents (Harry Truman and Thomas Jefferson) to kings (King Victor Emmanuel of Italy , King Farouk of Egypt, and King Louis XVI of France) to millions of commoners like us.
You can join millions of famous and not-so-famous folks of the past and present and have lots of fun collecting coins, but first, you need to arm yourself with some information. Every coin collector builds their collection differently. Some people with little imagination go for the simplest and least interesting coins; others with more derring-do go for complex and confusing ones. The good news: There isn’t one right way to collect coins, so no matter how you go about it, you can have a good time. For an overview of coin collecting, including the whys and hows, turn to Chapter 2.
Before you spend a dime on collecting coins, you need a buying strategy. You need to know how to research the coins you’re interested in, as well as how condition, rarity, supply, and other factors influence the coins’ values. Most beginning coin collectors get hung up on values. Don’t get me wrong: Value is important, but it’s just one of the things you may want to consider when collecting coins. Also important, are discovering which coins interest you and building a collection you can enjoy. I cover all these topics in Chapter 3.
When you’ve decided to give coin collecting a green light, and you’ve set up a plan for building your coin collection, you’ll want to be sure you know how to hold a coin correctly (because if you don’t hold it correctly, you could damage it) and how to store your collection (to keep it safe from all the evils that can befall a coin). Turn to Chapter 4 for more information on storing and handling your coin collection, whether it consists of one coin or a hundred.
Eeny, Meeny, Miney, Moe: Deciding Which Coins to Collect
Sure, you could rush out to the nearest coin dealer and fork over a bunch of cash for the first shiny coin you see. But in the trade, a common expression is “Buy the book before you buy the coin.” I recommend getting familiar with what’s out there first. Maybe ancient Greek or Roman coins or coins from the biblical period suit your fancy. Maybe you’re blown away by coins from the Byzantine Empire or mowed down by medieval European coins. You have unlimited choices in these areas alone; turn to Chapter 5 for the lowdown.
On the other hand, maybe you’re more interested in modern U.S. coins. If so, you’re not alone. The U.S. Mint has sold coins to millions of people in the past few years. That’s a lot of collectors, so you can count on meeting all kinds of new people and making friends as you build your U.S. coin collection. For more on U.S. coins, check out Chapter 6.
Maybe you’re more interested in collecting coins from around the world than you are in sticking with the red, white, and blue. You can collect by country, by denomination, by date, by size, or by topic. Coins go in and out of style, too — maybe not as fast as fashion trends brands of blue jeans, but there are trends in coin collecting, and as a collector, you should be aware of them. You can find more on this topic in
