WORLD's OLDEST COIN



The history, and the coins in detail, that no coin type can stake a better claim for being the world's oldest than the Lydian coin pictured above, called a third stater (or trite) but perhaps the largest denomination of its type and without question the most common. This coin was minted around 600 BC in Lydia, Asia Minor (current-day Turkey), a country in close proximity to both the civilizations of Mesopotamia, from which ideas about money and much else originated, and the Greek colonies in Asia Minor, through which ideas about coinage and much else spread.



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Lydian electrum trite, first major variety (4.71g, 13x10x4 mm), Sardis, Lydia, Asia Minor (present-day Turkey), c. 610-600 BC.


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Lydian electrum trite, second major variety (4.74g, 12x11x4 mm), Sardis, Lydia, Asia Minor (present-day Turkey), c. 600-560 BC.

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