Any US areas for ancient coins??

[Dreadnox]

Ok, I am trying to find a starting point if there is one for ancient coins, I mean Greek, Roman, Spanish, that sort of coinage. Is there any good areas that I should start researching for such finds or do these even exist inside the USA? I know shore lines produce some of these off old ship wrecks but any suggestions as to any place else? Any help here is greatly appriciated.

 

[fella]

Lots where coin shops once stood!

 

[Tom_in_CA]

reply

Ok, I am trying to find a starting point if there is one for ancient coins, I mean Greek, Roman, Spanish, that sort of coinage. Is there any good areas that I should start researching for such finds or do these even exist inside the USA? I know shore lines produce some of these off old ship wrecks but any suggestions as to any place else? Any help here is greatly appriciated.

It depends on what you mean by "ancient". The average person, when thinking "ancient", (especially in context with the countries you cite like Grecian and Roman), is thousand plus years old. You know, like the kind of stuff they find in Europe from the time-of-Christ, or BC, or dark ages, etc...

But then you turn around and give an example of coins from Shiprwrecks here. Ie.: the spanish stuff that turns up ala mel fisher type aged stuff. But I don't know if I would call those "ancient". They're after the obvious "european contact" with the americas.

So if by "ancient" you simply meant any old coins associated with the post-european contacts, then you just look in the places where such activity of those time periods took place. The indians here in north america had no refined metals. Well ... at least not "coins". So you'd have to look in post exploration/contact era sites. And that's as "ancient" as you're going to get (unless you buy into the supposed earlier arrivals pre-columbus, blah blah, and think you're going to somehow find something from that era).

 

[Mackaydon]

Mission lands (but only with permission) along 'El Camino Real' (the Royal Road) in California--from the 1700s.
Don.......

 

[Silver Searcher]

Las Vegas....Caesars Palace..

 

[treadhead]

The "old" park I hunt (WAAAAAY over here in ORYGUN) started out as a Cavalry stop back in the late 1850's (The town was
established in the late '40's).

I'm pretty sure that I'll never find a Spanish real here but.....I'm workin' hard to find all those '53 Liberty Head Dollars that I
(JUST) "know" this place is littered with lol

 

[Whatacoin]

I collect medieval and ancient coins (among other types). Here in Florida you may find shipwreck and colonial stuff from the 17th and 18th century. As far as Roman, Greek, Celt and Byzantine stuff goes its hard enough to even find them to buy, I have to get everything of the internet.

 

[U.K. Brian]

There's the hoard that indicated Muslim presence in the U.S. 500 years prior to the arrival of Columbus. Hundreds of North African Islamic copper/silver alloy coins were found in 1787 during road building between Cambridge and Malden, Mass.

The Roman and Greek coins that have been found (there's quite a few) don't seem to indicate that they made it to America as they are always found alone which suggests they are just introductions brought from the home countries in the last few hundred years. Now if you could find a Roman hoard !

 

[wainzoid]

I would try :

Troy, Ohio

Rome, New York

Pompeii, Michigan

Sparta, Michigan

or maybe Athens, Georgia

 

[LM]

There's the hoard that indicated Muslim presence in the U.S. 500 years prior to the arrival of Columbus. Hundreds of North African Islamic copper/silver alloy coins were found in 1787 during road building between Cambridge and Malden, Mass.

I read about that.
I think Viking presence is more likely to explain that horde since we:

a) Know for virtual certain that they were here before Columbus
b) The exact same types of Islamic coinage have been found in Scandinavia.

 

[Iron Patch]

They are found but it's 100% random, because obviously they are lost in more modern times.

 

[TerryC]

Learn the routes taken by the Spaniards from Mexico into the (now) U.S. Along CA NM and AZ. Trivia... did you know most of those that died at the Alamo were Mexican citizens? Mexico was giving away free land but you were required to give oath to Mexico. You wanna know why? The Comanches were so feared by Mexico that Mexico wanted a buffer between the Comanche areas (northern TX and OK) and the state of Mexico. The rest, as they say, is history. TTC

 

[Silver Searcher]

Why is it so hard to except that early Europeans could have made there way to the Americas long before Lief Ericson, albeit by accident. In 1886, the remains of a shipwreck was found in Galveston Bay, Texas. Its construction is typically Roman.

The Ancient Americas (1)

SS

 

[jeff of pa]

in the U.S. ? Yes mainly along the Shores & Possibly along the Rivers that are fed through Inlets.

There are stories of Ancient coins being found in Caves, And on an Island in
the Susquehanna River, here in Central PA

And semi ancient artifacts at Carantouan (Spanish Hill) in Bradford County Pa ,
belonging to the Spanish.

Other then That, wherever you may get lucky someone dropped one in the last thousand or so years
Whether dropped back then or Recently from a young collectors pocket.

Don't stifle your Thinking, & Believe we have only been here since the 1400's.

Sea voyages have been happening for 700,000 years at least.

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2011/01/130000-year-old-shipbuilding-tools-discovered.html

coins have been around for at least 2,700 years .

http://www.fleur-de-coin.com/articles/oldest-coin

that gives allot of people a Big time period to have visited this Island
we now call the americas, and loose coins.

 

[TerryC]

Charles Garrett says there's more coins in the ground than in circulation. I believe it! TTC

 

[U.K. Brian]

LM though the Vikings may have brought the Islamic coins to America (they traded regularly all over the place and I've detected along the Viking trade route into Russia) one doubt I have about this is that there was no mention of other coins in the hoard. If you decide through danger to bury the wealth your carrying then you would think the hoard would include some Viking coins.

I have the location of the original hoard but no one on this forum was interested. I took the tack that the records at the time said that no one was interested in them thinking they had no value so they were left exposed and passers by took them just out of casual interest. These are the items that end up in the corner of a draw or in a sewing box, then the childred take them outside or to school and lose them so many remain to be found.

 

[Mekong Mike]

West coast washington state have produced ancient chinese coins 1000+ years ago. British Colombia chinese and japanese coins.

California chinese coins, spanish.

florida, spanish coins. texas, spanish coins.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Mekong Mike, I don't mean to burst your bubble, but those cache coins, even up to 1000 yrs. old, arrived here in much later times. Like in the regular westward exploration, and mine and RR worker times (1800s or whatever). Yes, even when the coins were hundreds, or even perhaps 1000 yrs. old. Because you see, those cache coins circulated without any regard to their ages, and thus show up at RR worker and gold rush era sites, WAY older than the sites they were found from. Apparently in China and Japan, those coins were made en-masse, and stored in barrels or whatever. And brought out at random times, with no regard to their mintage times. So the coolies and emigrants from those regions brought them over in normal historic periods that you are accustomed to.

I've found scores of those cache coins where I'm at in CA, since we have historic "China town" districts where emigrants settled after arriving here for the fishing industry, RR workers, mine workers, etc.... And yes, they can date to many hundreds of years before the Europeans were even in my area. But those dates have no relevance whatsoever to when they were "dropped".

I had to chuckle once, when I read about how a cache coin was found in some indian midden archaeological site somewhere in the NW (OR? WA?). And the archie dated the coin to the 1500s (?) or whatever. So the archies were "all over themselves with glee" thinking that this somehow proved the chinese were here before the earliest Spanish and European explorations in that region. I had to chuckle, because I knew those coins circulated and came here much later than their mintage dates

 

[pippinwhitepaws]

the oldest pottery found in the Americas is from the southern most portion of peru, and it is perfect Japanese raku method...
do not discount Chinese or Japanese visitations to north America...that is the direction the ocean flows...around the pacific rim...clockwise.

 

[ivan salis]

there was a "documented" Viking settlement on the east coast of Canada in about 1000 AD but I'm quite sure the area is "off limits" to metal detecting sadly