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Dean Kinzer: Ancient Coins, the Ides of March & How Money Reveals the Fall of Empires
Description
Ancient coin dealer Dean Kinzer of Kinzer Coins joins us to talk about 2,500 years of history you can hold in your hand. Dean grew up in a serious collector's household, and while settling his late father's estate he found a tray of Shekels of Tyre that changed his life.
We get into how coinage began in Ionia with electrum and Croesus, why Greek city-states treated their coins like works of art, and how Rome debased the denarius down to zero silver in about 60 years, with inflation you can trace coin by coin. Dean tells the story of Brutus's EID MAR coin, with two daggers marking the Ides of March, and why Caesar putting his own face on money may have helped get him killed. Plus the Sea Peoples and the Bronze Age collapse, Viking hoards, coins as imperial propaganda, the extinct silphium plant we know mostly from coins, and how to buy your first authentic ancient coin without getting burned.
Dean's shop, free Roman coin price guide and beginner resources: kinzercoins.com