Ancient Roman Coins Gallery

Posted on March 10, 2007 
Filed Under Gallery

For your viewing pleasure, there is a gallery online that I’ve long promised to put together for you. I spent the entire day sorting, resizing, tweaking, and choosing some of the coolest photos and put them online.

I present 2,115 photographs of some of the coolest ancient coins you’ve ever laid eyes on. Chances are you’ve never had the opportunity to see them before, in a gallery, where you can dig around and see the variety of images stamped into these old coins. I was really intrigued when I started looking at them, and decided that I’d share a collection of some very cool ancient artwork, preserved forever in small bits of metal.

To hold a coin in your hand that someone else held in their own hand so long ago. To me, it’s a way to connect with the past in a way. Money is a very personal thing, I can’t imagine how many different hands have touched these ancient coins. If only a coin could talk and tell you it’s history, of who once owned it, and where the coin traveled during it’s lifetime.

I was struck by a few things examining these coins. They’re small- the three I have are really small, maybe the size of a fingernail, maybe smaller. I’m also amazed by the level of detail, which I can’t fathom how they worked on dies this small before the advent of modern metal working tools and magnification tools.



The design work on some of these are very beautiful- there’s quite a few that are highly stylized, which in earlier times was necessary, as they didn’t have the ability to create fine details in coins. As a graphic designer, I really enjoy these ancient coins for their artistry. These photos were gathered from all corners of the web, from collector’s sites to Ebay listings. Take a cruise through the thumbnails when you’ve got some time to kill. I don’t think you’ll ever see another grouping of coins like this in one place again. There’s some incredibly cool designs on some of these.

These were chosen as a representative collection of the variety of ancient Roman coins. although there may be a few coins from somewhere else in the world.


There’s a few designs that I would LOVE to transfer the design to wood and carve. I believe I have a thick piece of mahogany out in the garage that might be perfect for this… hmm….

Ancient Coins Gallery

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