Stash of 100,00 ancient coins found at construction site

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Originally published at: Stash of 100,00 ancient coins found at construction site | Boing Boing

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Underground economy?

Article doesn’t say who gets to own this find under Japanese law.

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@pesco , I think you dropped a zero in the headline. The article says 100,000 coins.

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Ceramic, not precious metal coins?

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Are they bronze? Silver? Something else?

Going through a bag that had some of my grandpas old naval uniforms, as well as ephemera from him being released from the navy after going from Hawaii to San Francisco after WWII, I found a brass Chinese coin. They don’t have dates, per se, they have the Emperor and mint the coin was made under, and if you have an old Emperor, it could span decades. I looked it up and it was minted in the 1700s.

I have no idea how he go it. I dunno if he went to Chinatown and they sold them as souvenirs, or if he found it on the street or maybe got it in a handful of change, only it doesn’t look like anything American, with a square hole and being brass.

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These are the “Ban Liang” coin, which is bronze. You can also tell by the patina, which gold wouldn’t have, and which would be black on silver. Bronze is copper, which tends to have a green patina, and tin, which has a whiteish oxide, and that matches the photos.

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I think you are right. The only one fully described in the articles I found is bronze:

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When they said ‘at Maebashi City Bank, your money is safe with us!’ they weren’t kidding!

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I was guessing bronze too.

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Could be an old wishing well. Better check to see if there’s a couple of Goonies under there being chased by the Fratellis.

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Can we be absolutely sure they weren’t buried for ritual purposes?

(This is Japan, after all - they have quite a few rituals.)

/s

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Why are they so clean of dirt in the photo? Did they do the archaeology thing and clean them with toothbrushes or wash them down?

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I wonder what could have been bought by that amount at the time of burial. Also, who created that wealth “stored” in those coins?

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Looking forward to the bunch of c.f. 148 AD stone brochures for this new store of value. [Greases up and pulls on catsuit of the era made from real stretched old cat, starting to bald at the knees.] We’ll call it a “perma-hole” for finance. [Keeps digging, finds Ur-topia in a lava tube of unusual size.]

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Big coins; how big were their change purses??

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