A Brief History Of Coins

It’s hard to say for sure when people first took up coin collecting as a hobby, but it most likely started with the first minted coins around 650 BC. Before this, the medium of exchange was gold and silver carefully weighed out at every purchase. However, unscrupulous dealers passing off base metals for precious ones led to a need for a more standardized system. Thus, coins began to be minted which were made from gold and other precious metals at pre-measured weights. Coins quickly caught on as the preferred method of payment.

In the 5th century, the Greeks began to mint coins with the portraits of gods, goddesses and heroes on them. It was Alexander the Great who began having coins minted featuring portraits of real persons and places instead of mythological figures.

Francesco Petrarca (aka Petrarch), the poet and scholar often known as the “Father of the Renaissance” was a coin collector himself, helping the hobby to gain wider popularity; coin collecting became a favored pastime of noblemen and popes. There is evidence that coin collecting was a hobby in Italy long before this as well – Roman emperors were known to pay higher than face value for out of circulation coins. Louis the 14th, Henry the 4th and Ferdinand  I were all coin collectors, leading the hobby to acquire the nickname of” The Hobby of Kings”.

August 1962 saw the world’s first international coin collectors convention, held in Detroit, MI by the American Numismatic Association and the Royal Canadian Numismatic Association. The attendance for this event numbered around 40,000.

It wasn’t until 1792 that coins began to be minted in the United States. This was the year that the Coinage Act was passed; this gave official statues to the US Dollar as the medium of exchange in the still-fledgling nation. The US Silver Dollar was first minted at the Philadelphia Mint. In 1906, the Denver Mint was founded, followed by the San Francisco and West Point Mints – these mints mostly produce gold coins and proofs. Each US coin is stamped with a P, D, S or W, according to the mint where the coin was made.

There are millions of coin collectors all over the world today, with a number of museums being host to collections of rare and valuable coins. There is Washington D.C.’s Smithsonian Institution, the American Numismatic Society in New York City (founded in 1891 to foster interest in the hobby of coin collecting) and others. Coin collectors enjoy the thrill of the chase and the excitement of finding a rare or valuable coin.