A Roman denarius of silver was dropped by a soldier in Northumberland, where it was left in the soil for two and a half thousand years. Recently the coin was discovered by a metal detectorist, recorded on the Portable Antiquities Scheme and has been sold at a few provincial auctions before being exported to a collector in California and then returned to London where it is being offered for sale by a dealer.
This is not to say that all coins have had such amazing journeys, but a lot of them have, and that is because coins are so durable. A coin is a small, hard, dense object, made of metal, which is easy to hide and instantly recognisable as value. In contrast, a piece of cloth, a wooden tool or a leather boot are all relatively fragile and perishable objects, which are likely to have rotted, decayed or been destroyed long before a coin. The history of a coin is therefore likely to be long and complex, with many twists and turns, and often many owners.
The provenance of old coins is generally going to be worked out backwards. In other words, you start with the current owner of the coin and work your way through the auction catalogue, follow the trail of the dealer’s acquisition notes, and usually, you will reach a point, somewhere in the 1970s or earlier, where the trail just ends. Prior to that time, it is a matter of inference and archaeology.
Coin Auctioneers will know how to find out this information and work out its value.
The Portable Antiquities Scheme has been used to record over 1.5 million finds since its inception in 1997 by museums across England and Wales. Most of these finds are coins, and each record adds another verified location to the coin’s long and involuntary journey.
That denarius struck in Lyon, carried to Hadrian’s Wall, buried in some sudden or unexpected event two thousand years ago, and found by some metal detectorist in Northumberland in 2014 never chose any of this.
