Rare Coin Dealers

I will discuss in this article what exactly makes a rare coin an important subject of study for the historian. The short and crude answer is simply that coins comprise an important type of evidence that historians need. Coins provide a historian a window into a past to which he or she would otherwise remain completely blind. More often than constituting a breakthrough discovery on its own, a discovery in numismatics will often integrate into larger arguments between historians, in order to either support or undermine positions.

Needless to say, rare coins do not “speak” to us the way other types of historical evidence do. The upside to the study of numismatics is the fact that they generally issue from a trustworthy source such as a large nation state. Although this is not universally true, many times coins are produced in a mint; many times mints work directly under federal or state governments, etc. While historians must keep in mind the fact that no piece of evidence sits 100% above suspicion, some can make better arguments than others. It is these types of more trustworthy evidence that historians seek.

Another thing that makes the study of coins appeal in from the perspective of the historian is that they resemble cockroaches. Where you can find one, you can usually find one hundred. In other words, if a numismatic historian finds one peculiar aspect to a single coin, often times it not prove difficult for him to, with some amount of research, access hundreds if not thousands of copies of the same coin for the purposes of contrast and comparison. With this type of reference point, it becomes significantly easier to differentiate a fluke, or a misprinted coin as opposed to either a forgery or a mass-produced error on the part of the mint.

A third aspect making coins appealing to historians is the fact that, in a certain way, they represent the unconscious of the historical subject. This may sound like a peculiar position to make, but consider it briefly. If an ancient Greek person writes a document that you later discover, what you are reading is what that ancient Greek person consciously thought about their world and their surroundings. For this reason, written documents remain forever “censored” in this way. Unlike written documents, coin production generally does not sensor itself in this manner. In no way does a Greek blacksmith hammering out a coin seek to. Nor can he/she mute the material conditions of production the way a writer can.