I am new to collecting ancient greek coins. Can somebody please tell me the denominations for ancient greek coins? I know there are hemidrachms, drachms, and tetradrachms but thats about all I know. And can someone please tell me what each are worth, for example, 4 drachms=1 tetradrachm. I don't know if thats correct but i as trying to give an example in case it wasn't clear what i was asking. Thanks!
That helps but i still have some questions. What does AV, AR, and AE stand for? and whats the difference between drachm and hemidrachm and obol? if you could answer these that would be great. thanks.
AV - Gold AR - Silver Æ - Bronze (used generically for copper and orichalcum, a brassy alloy) Drachm is the base unit. Tetradrachm is for drachms (tetra=four), Hemidrachm is a half of a drachm (hemi=half). An obol is a smaller coin.
thanks. and what were the coins that were mainly used? is it tetradrachms, drachms, and hemidrachms? was there other commonly used denominations?
This as the base. You will find a multitude of various sizes when you delve further, but this is the base of the system. I don't blame Ardatirion from not going into every permutation, as the list would be quite long. Btw, the AE, AR, and AV are used universally for all coins, (at least by use ancient/medieval collectors, those modern guys are nuts). The only other listings of metals you may see would be electrum, (mixture or gold and silver), and billon, (mixture of copper and silver). Pb for the rare lead coin may also be found.
Tets were typically the largest silver used in daily commerce, but would be a quite large sum for daily living. Day to day everyone used more obols and copper coinage. Probably the most famous and most copied coin in the history of the world was the Athenian tetradrachm.
The point being missed here is that you asked for information on Ancient Greek coins like there was a country called Ancient Greece. What we know as ancient Greece was a group of several hundred authorities, cities, empires, leagues and even a few mercenary groups without a geographic base. Each did things 'their way'. Many used the drachm/tetradrachm system but others didn't. Add to that the fact that ancient Greece issued coins 500 years before they mostly became Roman provinces and most changed their systems somewhere along the way. This makes it a little more complex than just asking how many half dismes you get for a Euro. Add to that the other ugly fact of ancient coins: We don't know. We have coins from cities that we do not know where were located let alone what they called their coins or how they related to each other. Numismatists propose theories and sometimes disagree with little questions like whether this is a 1/5 or a 1/4. In many cases you will see a denomination listed as AE23, for example, which just means the coin is a copper alloy (bronze, brass or anything similar) and 23mm in diameter. There may be another coin listed as AE24 which means another example of the same coin as the first but just hammered harder or an AE22x24 which means a coin more oval than round (not necessarily on purpose - sometimes we just hammer a bit on the crooked side). The answers given by others above are pretty good as long as you realize that a complete answer would be a book of no small size.
Doug provided a really good background to these answers. You have denominations like stater, nomos, and didrachm which all hover around 7 grams; nomos typically being heavier and didrachms being lighter. Although, I have scene Nomos weigh in at 6 grams and didrachms weighing in at 8 grams. It all depends on what century, empire, ruler, metal, and economy you fall under. Just like America's problem today; City states used to wage economic war on each other by artificially inflating their silver and gold values. Much like China has done to us lately. I will list some strange examples concerning Tetradrachm weights Most Tets weigh in around 16-17 grams. Like the popular Alexander The Great Tet Yet, the Cistophoric Tetradrachm sits around 11-12 grams. When you are ready, you will find yourself reading into odd denominations. i.e. - The Ptolemaic Kingdom Octadrachm. This coin's typical weight is around 27-28 grams. Oddly, leaving you with a 13.5-14 gram Tetradrachm weight. Of course you must take into account the worth of Gold compared to Silver. Which at this point with egyptian metal conversion tables still doesn't add up quite right w/ the surrounding concurrent kingdoms. Then you get into very strange commemorative type coins like the "In the name of berenice II." Under Ptolemy III Pentekaidecadrachm... or 15 drachms. (strange weight of 52.5 grams) If you divide 52.5 by 15 you come to a drachm weight of 3.5. Which multiplied by 4 would give you your Tet weight at 14 grams. In short and to add to Doug's disposition, translating denominations amongst Greek coinage in itself should be a University Major. Which in turn backs a previous statement I believe I have read on this forum before. If you are hitting ancients hard; you need to spend at least 10-20% of your Ancient Coin budget on literature. $100-200 encyclopedias will pay for themselves within months. *note: None of these coins belong to me. Although I wish they did.
