Category: Treasures

Buy your own hoard of (shady) nickels

Modern(ish), Treasures

If you’ve dreamed of uncovering an untouched coin hoard but never found anything more than a few tin buttons no matter how many fields you’ve scanned, now you can make your dreams come true, as long as they involve paying for it. A full hoard good to go complete with the canvas bag it was stored in is coming up for sale next month at Heritage Auctions all in a single lot.

As individual pieces, the 1883 No CENTS Liberty nickels in this hoard aren’t all that rare or expensive. You can get one for a few bucks, and even uncirculated condition versions can be had for a few hundred. It’s the juicy, dirty history behind that lends them a rakish charm while at the same time keeping their value low.

Designed by Chief Engraver Charles E. Barber, who also designed the very similar Liberty Head half-dollar, the 1883 Liberty Head nickel had one feature that made it problematic: the only reference to its denomination was the Roman numeral V inside a laurel wreath on the reverse. But labeling a coin’s value as “five” isn’t exactly specific, especially when there are gold half eagles in circulation with busts of Lady Liberty on the obverse and laurel wreaths on the reverse worth five dollars.

Because of this wee oversight, people of less than honest intention immediately began to collect the nickels as an investment in the counterfeiting possibilities. A little gold-plating, a minor modification to the edges of the nickel so it more closely matched the fiver, a distracted retailer and next thing you know, you walk away from a nickel transaction with $4.95 in change jangling in your pocket. One Josh Tatum was reputed to have been adept at passing off gold-plated nickels as five dollar pieces. His system was foolproof: as a deaf-mute, he would simply present the coin, say nothing, take his change and get out of Dodge. Arrested and tried for fraud, because he never claimed to have paid using a five dollar coin, Tatum was never convicted. Or so the legend goes, anyway. The legend also says the expression “you are joshing me” (meaning “you’re kidding me”) springs from these events, but the idiom predates the 1883 coin by at least decades, so many grains of salt are in order here.

The Mint saw the error of its ways and within months issued an updated coin 1883 Liberty Head nickel with the word “CENTS” on the reverse, leaving a lot of speculators with collections of No CENTS nickels. That’s why they’re not worth all that much on the market today, because they were so widely hoarded by people hoping to get in the passing of fraudulent currency game. The versions with “FIVE CENTS” on the reverse are far rarer and more expensive today because nobody bothered to collect them.

Still, a group of 297 1883 No CENTS Liberty nickels stored in a single bag is not something you see every day. The bag is awesome in and of itself, printed in black text on the front: “New York / Lead Company’s / HIGHLY FINISHED / DROP SHOT / Tower & Office / 63 Centre St / New York / 3”. An attached period label even notes the exact date the coins were stashed in the bag — October 2, 1889 — so more than five years after the issue. They apparently stayed in the bag, untouched, unknown and unpublished, for more than a century until they were acquired by numismatist, US coin expert and rare coin dealer Jeff Garrett in 2009.

The nickels will be sold at the U.S. Coins Auction to be held April 25-30 during the Central States Numismatic Society annual convention. Bidding opens online on April 6th.

Digging the Carnoustie Bronze Age Hoard

Ancient, Multimedia, Treasures

If you’re at a loss on how to fritter away some time this weekend, I have a solution for you. Watch a couple of videos about the hoard of Bronze Age weapons discovered at the former Newton Farm in Carnoustie, eastern Scotland.

The first video captures the excavation in GUARD Archaeology’s Glasgow laboratory of the soil block containing the hoard. When I first wrote about this story last February, the only video available of the painstaking excavation of the 175-pound block of soil was a continuous scene a few seconds long of archaeologists scratching at the soil in minute movements. This video, uploaded to YouTube in December, summarizes the excavation and finds. There’s still minute scratching, which is awesome, but there’s so much more, plus descriptions of what you’re seeing.

In addition to the sensational weapons hoard, postholes and pits from two Neolithic rectilinear timber halls, one the largest Neolithic structure ever discovered in the British Isles, and gulleys and hearth remains from at least 12 Bronze Age roundhouses were found at the site. There wasn’t a great deal of information about these finds in February 2017, but in May, GUARD Archaeology Project Officer Alan Hunter Blair delivered a lecture packed with details, photographs and diagrams of the structures. That lecture is now available on YouTube.

He also covers the discovery of the hoard, its excavation in the lab and includes great pictures of the organic remains like the pouch the spearhead was found in and the fragment of strap still attached to the pommel of the sword. That part begins around the 15:45 mark.

I should warn you that he speaks very quickly, which is both a blessing and a curse. The former because it keeps the video nice and short at about 20 minutes; the latter because he zooms through it without looking up from his paper so delivery is a little dry and rushed. The information is fascinating, however, and the visual aids illuminating so it’s well worth watching.

12th c. silver and gold hoard found at Cluny Abbey

Medieval, Treasures

A hoard of hidden medieval treasure, a fortune in gold and silver coins, was an unexpectedly discovered during an excavation at the site of the famed medieval Abbey of Cluny in Saône-et-Loire, eastern France. The team, which includes nine students doing field work as part of the University Lumière Lyon 2’s archaeology masters program, unearthed the hoard in mid-September while looking for the remains of an infirmary believed to have been located there in the Middle Ages.

The medieval loot included 2,200 deniers (or pieces of silver) mostly issued by Cluny Abbey itself as well as 21 gold dinar coins, originally from the Middle East which were stored in a canvas bag.

The bounty also included a gold signet ring marked with the word “Avete” — a “word of greeting in a religious context” — as well as a folded 24-gram gold leaf and gold coin.

“The overall value of this treasure for the time is estimated between three and eight horses, the equivalent of cars nowadays, but in terms of the running of the abbey it’s not that much, amounting to about six days of supply of bread and wine,” said specialist Vincent Borrel.

In terms of archaeological and historical value, this treasure is off the charts. It is the first 12th century Cluniac treasure discovered in its original context during an archaeological excavation. It’s also the largest number of silver deniers discovered in one place and the only single hoard ever found to include Arabic coins, silver deniers and a signet ring. The intaglio stone is ancient Roman and engraved with the profile of a deity. (Religious context or no religious context, ancient engravings were prestige items and often used as signet rings by the medieval elite.)

Also of note is the survival of fragments of the original bag the hoard was stashed in. Fragments of it are still attached to some of the coins. There is also a surviving piece of tanned animal hide which was tied around the bundle of 21 gold dinars minted between 1121 and 1131 in Spain and Morocco during the reign of Almoravid sultan Ali Ben Youssef (1106-1143).

Practically from the time of its founding by by Duke William I of Aquitaine in 910 A.D., the Benedictine monastery of Cluny was one of the great monastic centers of Western Europe. They followed a strict interpretation of the Rule of Saint Benedict that within decades had catapulted Cluny to the top of the ranks, making the abbey the undoubted leader in European monasticism. The city of Cluny grew into a city thanks largely to the Abbey and the trade, employment and pilgrim moneys it brought to town. By the second half of the 10th century, the Abbey of Cluny was already well-established as the top monastery in the country and it retained its prominence into the 12th century.

Its influence began to wane when newer, more austere orders stole Benedictine thunder and the idea of remote rule by a single abbot, distant from the satellite houses and largely unaccountable, lost its appeal. In the 16th century the Abbey of Cluny was sacked by Hugenots and never really recovered. Come the French Revolution, the monastic order was dissolved and under Napoleon the abbey itself was demolished and used as a quarry. Today only one of its eight grand towers still stands, which is why archaeologists continue to excavate it today, 90 years after the first archaeological explorations of the site began.

Pylos warrior tomb’s tiniest treasure is its greatest

Ancient, Treasures

When the intact grave of a Bronze Age man was discovered in Pylos, southwestern Greece, two years ago, it was so dense with luxurious grave goods that it set a new record for the wealthiest single grave ever found in Greece. Its location, next to the so-called Palace of Nestor of Trojan War fame, and the richness of the contents even generated breathless speculation that this might be the tomb of a Homeric hero. Entirely groundless speculation — the shaft tomb is around 300 years older than the palace which was destroyed in 1,180 B.C. — but it’s an inescapable side-effect when archaeologists discover ivory-handled, gold-covered weapons, four gold signet rings, more than 1,000 semi-precious stone beads, silver and bronze cups, a massive gold chain, 50 seal stones decorated with Minoan motifs, carved ivory and ever so much more, enough to reignite a million childhood fantasies of pirate booty treasure maps where X always marks the spot.

Little encrusted piece before conservation. Photo courtesy the University of Cincinnati.After the dust from the dig had settled, the team, led by University of Cincinnati archaeologists Jack Davis and Sharon Stocker, had unearthed more than 3,000 burial objects, all of which were sent to the Archaeological Museum of Chora for triage, study and conservation. One of the objects was a small sort of kite-shaped piece caked in thick lime accretions entirely obscuring its surface. It was put in the To Do pile while conservators focused on the larger ticket items, like the heaps of gold, weapons and jewels.

They were finally able to beging cleaning the wee thing — it’s less than an inch and a half long — a year later and discovered that under all lime scale was one of the greatest pieces of art in Greek history. It’s a sealstone, not made of precious metals like the signet rings found in the tomb, but of agate. This one’s value is in the astonishing detail and precision in the miniature carving.

The “Pylos Combat Agate,” as the seal has come to be known for the fierce hand-to-hand battle it portrays, promises not only to rewrite the history of ancient Greek art, but to help shed light on myth and legend in an era of Western civilization still steeped in mystery. […]

Davis and Stocker say the Pylos Combat Agate’s craftsmanship and exquisite detail make it the finest discovered work of glyptic art produced in the Aegean Bronze Age.

“What is fascinating is that the representation of the human body is at a level of detail and musculature that one doesn’t find again until the classical period of Greek art 1,000 years later,” explained Davis. “It’s a spectacular find.”

Even more extraordinary, the husband-and-wife team point out, is that the meticulously carved combat scene was painstakingly etched on a piece of hard stone measuring just 3.6 centimeters, or just over 1.4 inches, in length. Indeed, many of the seal’s details, such as the intricate weaponry ornamentation and jewelry decoration, become clear only when viewed with a powerful camera lens and photomicroscopy.

“Some of the details on this are only a half-millimeter big,” said Davis. “They’re incomprehensibly small.”

The miniature masterpiece portrays a victorious warrior who, having already vanquished one unfortunate opponent sprawled at his feet, now turns his attention to another much more formidable foe, plunging his sword into the shielded man’s exposed neck in what is sure to be a final and fatal blow.

This thing is unbelievable. I think I’ve stared at the fallen fighter on the left for a solid hour.

Here is an enlarged drawing of the artwork so you can see the astonishing detail the carver was able to achieve with whatever meagre magnification options were available in 1,500 B.C. (or maybe none at all):

Beyond all the superlatives that can and should be showered upon this marvel of artistry, researchers believe the sealstone reveals new information of major significance about Minoan culture and their interactions with the Mycenaeans who so thirstily drank of Minoan culture and spread it throughout the Greek mainland.

In a series of presentations and a paper published last year, Davis and Stocker revealed that the discovery of four gold signet rings bearing highly detailed Minoan iconography, along with other Minoan-made riches found within the tomb, indicates a far greater and complex cultural interchange took place between the Mycenaeans and Minoans.

But the skill and sophistication of the Pylos Combat Agate is unparalleled by anything uncovered before from the Minoan-Mycenaean world, say the researchers. And that raises a bigger question: How does this change our understanding of Greek art in the Bronze Age?

“It seems that the Minoans were producing art of the sort that no one ever imagined they were capable of producing,” explained Davis. “It shows that their ability and interest in representational art, particularly movement and human anatomy, is beyond what it was imagined to be. Combined with the stylized features, that itself is just extraordinary.”

The revelation, he and Stocker say, prompts a reconsideration of the evolution and development of Greek art.

“This seal should be included in all forthcoming art history texts, and will change the way that prehistoric art is viewed,” said Stocker.

For more about the Griffin Warrior tomb, check out this thoroughly documented, content-rich website created by Davis and Stocker and the Pylos team. Pictures are a bit small, alas, but they need to pinch bandwidth pennies because conserving an enormous quantity of priceless archaeological artifacts is an expensive proposition, especially trying to keep the fragmentary bronze armour from falling apart. You can contribute to the project here. All donations go directly to conservation.

Update: National Museum secures Galloway Hoard

Medieval, Museums, Treasures

National Museums Scotland has successfully raised the £1.98 million ($2,550,000) necessary to acquire the Galloway Hoard. Half of the money will be given to metal detectorist Derek McLennan, who discovered the hoard in a field in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, in 2014, as an ex gratia payment in accordance with the terms of the Treasure Act which awards finders of artifacts adjudicated to be treasure a cash sum equivalent to their market value as an incentive to disclosing these kinds of discoveries instead of looting them for secret resale or to keep for themselves. The other half will go to the landowners, the Church of Scotland, which will dedicate its share to the local parish in which the treasure was found.

The Galloway Hoard was assessed by the valuation committee at such a large sum because it is the richest Viking hoard ever discovered in Britain. It includes silver jewelry, silver and gold ingots, a unique gold bird-shaped pin, a lidded silver-gilt pot, arm rings, brooches, a solid silver cross pendant decorated in enamel with the images of the Four Evangelists, bejeweled aestels (manuscript pointers), glass and crystal beads, a rock crystal jar and much more. Besides the sheer quantity and quality of the precious objects in the hoard, they are without parallel in the different places and cultures they came from. The rock crystal jar is believed to have been made in the Middle East; the lidded pot is Carolingian; the glass beads are Scandinavian; the stamp-decorated bracelets are Irish; one of the silver pieces is engraved with runes at first thought to be Scandinavian but have been found upon closer examination to be Anglian. The ages of the objects vary significantly as well. The hoard was buried in the early 10th century, but the Carolingian pot was at least a century old by then, so it was likely kept as an heirloom for several generations before being used to hold the treasures it still contained a thousand years later.

Some of the greatest of the treasures found inside the vessel are of little pecuniary but inestimable archaeological value. They are the remains of textiles that survived wrapped around several of the pieces stored inside the vessel and around the pot itself, plus leather and wood fragments. These exceedingly rare surviving organic materials, never found before in a hoard of this age, contain a wealth of information about the Viking Age, its travel and trade routes. They’re also a major conservation challenge, which is one of the reasons the Galloway Hoard was not allocated to a Galloway museum. NMS has the resources, expertise and carefully controlled conservation environment to ensure the continued survival organic remains.

The hoard has been on temporary display at the National Museums Scotland in Edinburgh since the summer. The exhibition just closed on October 1st, but fear not, the treasures will be back in public view after a period of conservation and study. Here is Martin Goldberg, curator of the museum’s Early Medieval and Viking collections, guiding viewers through the exhibition and some of the objects from the Galloway Hoard.