Keyword: coins

Reseachers uncover a pyramid-like structure in the Judean Desert, photo taken March 2025 (photo credit: JUDEAN DESERT SURVEY UNIT, ISRAEL ANTIQUITIES AUTHORITY) =============================================================================== Experts uncover a massive pyramid-shaped structure, ancient papyrus documents and rare artifacts from Hellenistic-era rule in southern Israel, shedding new light on the region’s history. An excavation in the Judean Desert unearthed a massive 2,200-year-old pyramid-shaped structure alongside ancient papyri, weapons, tools, and fabrics, which experts are calling one of the richest archaeological excavations in the area. The Israel Antiquities Authority and the Heritage Ministry, which are jointly leading the dig north of Nahal Zohar, say...

For almost 20 years now, the physical act of making some of our money has weirdly been a money-loser for the United States Mint. Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are apparently looking to undo that paradox. Stop making cents In one of the first DOGE posts on X after the department was established, it highlighted the well-known oddity that each individual penny costs more than 3 cents to make and distribute. It also wrongly claimed that producing the coin set US taxpayers back more than $179 million in FY23. (That figure was the loss of minting...

In a move potentially foretold by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), it seems the U.S. could be on the verge of ending penny production. President Donald Trump on Sunday said that he had asked the Treasury Department to stop minting new pennies, calling them “wasteful.” “For far too long the United States has minted pennies which literally cost us more than 2 cents. This is so wasteful! I have instructed my Secretary of the US Treasury to stop producing new pennies. Let’s rip the waste out of our great nations budget, even if it’s a penny at a time,”...

The U.S. Mint is offering Americans a bronze medal to commemorate “United States Capitol Police and those who protected the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.” Clicking on the Mint’s “description” of what happened that day finds J6 protesters described as “a mob of insurrectionists.” The J6 commemorative medal / U.S. Mint Quick reminder: No J6 defendant was ever charged with “insurrection.” The coin/medal, is available in 1.5 or 3 inches in diameter and costs between $20 and $160. The Mint refers to the J6 medal as a “perfect gift for current and former police officers.” The description on the...

The Guardian reports that a hoard of ancient coins was discovered by a pair of metal detectorists in the Netherlands, in an area where Roman troops returning from Britain may have landed. The coins were placed in a cloth or leather pouch and deposited in a shallow pit in a swampy area. The hoard is made up of 44 gold staters bearing the name of the Celtic king Cunobelin, who ruled in southeastern Britain from A.D. 5 to 40. The hoard also contains some 360 Roman coins, including 72 gold aurei, and 288 silver denarii dated to between 200 B.C....

Ancient texts speak of a strange and valuable metal known as orichalcum. The mystical material was often dismissed as a fantastical invention – until they discovered a large cache of the stuff in the Mediterranean Sea. Orichalcum’s name is derived from the Greek for "mountain copper.” One of its most prominent mentions comes in the legend of Atlantis by Plato, in which it is described as “more precious [...] than anything except gold.” The dialogue, called Critias, explains how the mythical citadel of Atlantis was adorned with walls, pillars, and floors that were coated in orichalcum, endowing the building with...

A unique hoard of 321 silver coins from the 11th century has been unearthed during archaeological work at the Sizewell C nuclear power station site in Suffolk, England. These coins, surrounded by lead and once wrapped in a cloth that has since decayed, are part of a "perfect archaeological time capsule," said Andrew Pegg of Oxford Cotswold Archaeology (OCA), which is excavating the site.The coins, issued from 1036 to 1044, span the reigns of Harold I, Harthacnut, and Edward the Confessor. Most were minted in London, but others came from regional mints, including at Thetford, Norwich, and Ipswich, and even...

A rare collection of ancient coins was discovered last week by Israeli researchers, who called the find an "archaeological Hanukkah miracle." The coins are more than 2,000 years old and believed to belong to King Alexander Jannaeus, the second ruler of the Hasmonean dynasty that presided over Judea in the final centuries leading up to the common era, according to the University of Haifa in Israel. Archaeologists found the hoard of about 160 of the coins during ongoing excavations in the Jordan Valley, which runs between the Israeli-occupied West Bank and the eastern border of Jordan. The project is headed...

Marine archaeologist Alexandre Monteiro has said that the coast of Portugal between the Azores and Madeira islands holds golden treasure-laden shipwrecks. This region is said to contain close to 8,620 ships, and 250 of them are said to hold a significant amount of gold treasure. Monteiro is an investigator who works with Nova University in Lisbon and has built a database that records shipwrecks dating back to the XVI century when historical records become more easily accessible. In an interview with a local outlet, Lusa, Monteiro claims to have documented more than 7,500 shipwrecks off Portugal’s continental coast, 1000 near...

...The usual story is that the fragments remained untouched for 880 years until the invasion by the Umayyad caliph Muawiya I. However, literary and geological evidence suggest a more complex, and more likely, story involving several reconstructions, finishing with a devastating earthquake in 142...The little we know about the statue comes from the frustratingly brief writings of Philo... Strabo... and Pliny... however none of these authors describe what it actually looked like, apart from its height. It is generally assumed that the head of Helios resembled that on Rhodian coins... and that it topped a rather austere vision of the...

Kaja Veilleux has hunted New England attic treasures for more than 50 years. He once found a copy of the Declaration of Independence sitting on a pile of trash, and he made headlines this year when he stumbled upon a million-dollar portrait gathering dust in an old farmhouse in Maine that may have been painted by the Dutch master Rembrandt. Then there was the time, Veilleux said, he was shown a $50,000 gold coin kicking around in a tool drawer, only to have the well-meaning owner destroy much of its value before he could auction it by using a scouring...

Not everyone is convinced.-Archaeologist Kathleen Martinez, who has been on the hunt for Cleopatra VII’s tomb for nearly 20 years, believes she’s found a bust that depicts the Egyptian queen. -The claim has put some at odds with Martinez, as other experts say the bust looks nothing like Cleopatra. -Along with the marble statue, the team also discovered 337 coins—some of which (less controversially) depict Cleopatra. Lawyer-turned-archaeologist Kathleen Martinez has been on the hunt for Cleopatra VII’s tomb for nearly two decades. And now, she believes that she and her team have just unearthed a small marble bust of the...

The pendant imitates a Roman coin called a solidus, a type of gold coin introduced by the emperor Constantine in the fourth century A.D. It was discovered in January 2023 near the town of Attleborough in Norfolk, England, and dates to the late fifth to early sixth century. The piece of jewelry copies the imagery and inscriptions found on coins from the time of emperor Honorius, ruler of the Western Roman Empire from A.D. 393 to 423.The obverse shows a bust of Honorius wearing a pearl diadem and a cuirass, or chest armor, while the reverse depicts a draped standing...

A rare 1975 dime missing its "S" mint mark was auctioned for $506,250. Photo courtesy of GreatCollections Nov. 5 (UPI) -- A rare U.S. dime missing its mint mark was auctioned for $506,250, nearly 30 times the amount it sold for 46 years earlier. GreatCollections, which handled the auction of the "1975 No S Proof Dime," said the coin was purchased by an Ohio collector and his mother for $18,200 in 1978, and it remained with the family for nearly 50 years. The collector's family decided to have the dime auctioned, and it was given a Proof-67 grade by the...

While digging to find an ancient settlement in southern Sweden, archaeologists made a completely unexpected discovery: an enormous Viking Age cemetery with more than 100 graves and several ship-shaped mounds...The cemetery was initially found in 2017 in the village of Tvååker, in southwestern Sweden, ahead of planned road construction. Although Tvååker is mentioned in historical sagas, the aboveground remains of this particular cemetery were lost to time until recently."The problem is that the land has been plowed and leveled to create pastures," Nordin said, "so all the occupation levels, above-ground remains, and burials have been plowed to pieces."During excavations carried...

Live Science reports that nearly 3,000 poorly preserved coins were discovered by a metal detectorist in the Westerwald mountain range, in an area outside the borders of the Roman Empire and any known settlements of ancient Germanic tribes. The coins were unearthed by archaeologists who also recovered more than 200 unidentified thin silver fragments decorated with geometric designs from the site. The cache had been placed in a ceramic pot and hidden between two rocks. "Most of the coins are so called Antoniniani, which were the official silver coin in the Roman Empire in the third century [A.D.], but mostly...

Massive Hoard of Silver Pennies From Norman Conquest Valued at $5.6MA pile of 1,000-year-old silver pennies from the Chew Valley hoard, which was recently discovered by metal detectorists in Somerset. The treasure sheds new light on the post-Conquest period and the impact of the Norman invasion on England. The pennies were acquired by the South West Heritage Trust for £4.4 million ($5.6 million USD). The hoard of pennies is now the "highest value treasure on record". Courtesy of the British Museum A massive hoard of 1,000-year-old silver pennies found by a group of people learning how to use metal detectors...

A 1,000-year-old Viking "wallet" containing dozens of silver coins was recently discovered by British historians on the Isle of Man, officials announced Monday.Metal detectorists John Crowe and David O'Hare discovered the "hoard" of treasure — around 36 whole and fragmented coins — while searching on private land earlier in the year, the Manx National Heritage organization said on social media...What is even more interesting is that the coins were minted under multiple different Irish and English rulers, with the majority from the reign of Edward the Confessor (1042-1066 AD), as well as English kings Aethelred II (978-1016 AD) and Canute...

TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) — Three sisters from Ohio who inherited a dime kept in a bank vault for more than 40 years knew it had some value. But they had no idea just how much until just a few years ago. The extraordinarily rare coin, struck by the U.S. Mint in San Francisco in 1975, could bring more than $500,000, said Ian Russell, president of GreatCollections, which specializes in currency and is handling an online auction that will end in October. What makes the dime depicting President Franklin D. Roosevelt so valuable is a missing “S” mint mark for San...

We've got an exciting new exhibition at Corbridge Roman Town on Hadrian's Wall, showing one of the most significant finds in Roman history - the Corbridge Hoard. Here you can watch this never before seen in public film footage of the excavation of the hoard back in 1964. The Corbridge Hoard is one the most remarkable Roman finds of the past century. The armour, found during the 1964 excavations, has since helped to shape Roman historians' understanding of Roman armour - definitely worth a visit to Hadrian's Wall! We've shared this great footage with the kind permission of Mrs A....