"Tens of thousands" of Roman coins discovered off Sardinian coast

[DLTcoins]

Breaking news:  

https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/tens-thousands-ancient-coins-found-off-sardinia-spoils-104632373

Edited November 4, 2023 by DLTcoins

[Ancient Coin Hunter]

Wow that's pretty amazing. A lot of Constantinian bronze pieces it sounds like.

[Kali]

Thanks for sharing the link.

[Heliodromus]

Another group of coins from this find shown here:

https://wwmt.com/news/offbeat/tens-of-thousands-of-ancient-coins-found-off-coast-of-mediterranean-island-undersea-archaeology-department-italian-culture-ministry-ancient-discovery-sea-grass

If these are representative, looks like fairly narrow 320-335 AD date range. Meh - they can keep them, not that there's any doubt they will.

[JayAg47]

I know people hoarded silver and gold coins, but why these bronzes? I think these coins came straight from the mint and shipped off to the provinces and got lost due to the ship sinking.

[Restitutor]

If I were Buzzfeed I’d title this “Tens of thousands of coins found in Sardinia, birthplace of Napoleon… were they owned by the infamous French emperor?! 15 reasons why they could be, #12 will blow your mind!” 😁

[John Conduitt]

1 hour ago, JayAg47 said:

I know people hoarded silver and gold coins, but why these bronzes? I think these coins came straight from the mint and shipped off to the provinces and got lost due to the ship sinking.

Many of the largest Roman hoards are bronzes and not all straight from the mint. Each coin was worth a lot less than silver but there wasn’t much silver to hoard - Ocre has 136 silver coins struck under Constantine I out of 4096 coins (3%) compared to 491 out of 1389 for Hadrian (35%). Ten times fewer. Most people wouldn’t have had access to gold.

Some of the British hoards of bronzes seem to be related to demonetisation. You buried your coins for protection or whatever, then the emperor changed, and the new one demonetised the previous emperor’s coins. Since they were bronze and not silver their intrinsic value is a lot less, so they got left in the ground.

Edited November 5, 2023 by John Conduitt

[mc9]

@Heliodromus,

I see a not so common piece, there is a gloria exercitus in the middle of the picture,on the right side up, there is a victoria with a shield, normaly on a praw, standing facing or looking left. This one is looking and walking or standing right.

 

Who knows what is in this group that is unknown ?

Edited November 5, 2023 by mc9

[Heliodromus]

4 hours ago, mc9 said:

I see a not so common piece, there is a gloria exercitus in the middle of the picture,on the right side up, there is a victoria with a shield, normaly on a praw, standing facing or looking left. This one is looking and walking or standing right.

Do you mean one of these ? They all look normal to me - Victory facing left.

4 hours ago, mc9 said:

Who knows what is in this group that is unknown ?

True, but the date range, assuming this group is representative, is basically boring. Outside of something completely unknown, best you could hope for would be a SPES PVBLIC or some other Constantinople rarity.

[Rand]

Given that the coins were found during diving, they were likely related to maritime trade unless the shoreline had changed. 30 or even 50 thousand bronze coins would still be a modest amount for bigger transactions. As such, it is less likely to be part of a treasury for military operations. 

Hopefully, its content will become available to the researchers and the public for analysis. The historical value of this find is more important than the monetary value.

[Rand]

I liked the video of the coins being collected by divers.

 

Edited November 6, 2023 by Rand

[Heliodromus]

While the coins themselves seem boring (at least to me, who collects this period), the circumstances of the loss seem interesting...

From the group coin picture I can see coins from Arles, Rome, Ticinum, Aquileia, Siscia, Heraclea, Constantinople, Nicomedia - a good sampling from a wide swathe of the empire. The Italian reporting says 30,000-50,000 coins, which at ~3.5g each would be ballpark 100-175 Kg.

I assume that coins from the mint of Rome, and later Arles, would have been transported by sea to parts of the empire without mints that needed them such as Sardinia and Spain (where coins from Rome seem to be overrepresented), but this is clearly not a mint delivery. The reporting mentions a few Amphorae found too, but they don't seem to be saying anything much more about the context. It seems most likely to have been a trade ship, but seems a bit surprising (maybe shouldn't be) that it would be carrying a fairly large amount of bronze coinage like this. I wonder how typical this is of mass coin finds associated with wrecks ?