Back in the early 90s when i was a young whipper-snapper getting into coins i was browsing through my 1985 Spinks coin catalogue and i waded through many things and hoped i get one or more of them one day. But then i came across a coin i took a liking to, or rather a ruler i took a liking to, he had a pretty cool name i thought. One of a kind and as it turns out was responsible for ensuring England had it's first standard coin since the Romans had bade farewell some centuries earlier.

This guy was called Athelstan, a brave warrior, a king respected by his subjects, hated and feared by those whom were his enemies. He won a major battle at Brunanburgh in 937 and drove out the vikings, captured York and extended the Kingdom of England further than any king before him had. He'd survived an assasination attempt by successfully making use of spies and he was the first English king to meddle in continental politics, notably those of France where he gave the French king assistance and even somewhere to stay during his exile.

Athelstan was a legendary king along the lines of the fabled king Arthur, and the real kings Alfred the Great, Eadgar, Canute and Edward the Confessor.

Throughout much of the middle ages he was well known, at least up until the Reformation. During the turmoil of the changing religious atmosphere, many of the old traditions and stories were lost and destroyed. Whilst Alfred the Great and Eadgar continued on in public memory, Athelstan's was largely forgotten and swept aside. The reason for this was the nature of his character. Human nature is to put people, especially kings into labelled boxes, "good king", "bad king". Whilst somehow people have kept the hazy rose tinted view of Alfred the Great and Eadgar and allocated them as "good kings" alongside Richard I (Undeservingly so). Athelstan underwent an identity crisis, for he would neither fit into one box or the other comfortably.

He was a wise and just king, but he also had a streak of deception and ruthlessness in him. It is thought that he had a possible rival to his throne murdered and thought of himself in no uncertain terms as an Emperor and was somewhat egotistical. He wouldn't fit into the religious ideal of what was good for a king, unlike the pure and virtuous St. Edward the Confessor, Athelstan was greedy and ambitious. Thus because he could neither fit into the 'good' or 'bad' king lists comfortably, like most anomalies he was swept under the carpet and ignored.

But perhaps Athelstan is more deserving of a place in history than most English Kings because he portrayed the entire aspects of human nature, the good, the bad and the downright ugly aspects of all humans. Despite all this he managed to retain dignity and repect from his enemies and his friends alike. An innovator, a foresightful king, the first Imperialist in English history who would have been loved by the Victorians. He took great care in ensuring the coinage was standard and of good quality, he was harsh in his punishments of those that abused the coinage. He ensured people caught producing underweight, debased coins were castrated and had their right hand amputated.


So naturally such an important but seldom heard of figure in the history of England would no doubt have grabbed my attention. So as a child i thought yes i shall have to get a coin of him one day, it was a dream of mine that i knew i'd fulfil one day because like Athelstan's view of an enlarged England i'd make it happen.


Fifteen years went on from then and i'd never even seen one turn up on the market. Then one day whilst casually browsing the internet one mysteriously turned up. At $1300 it was not cheap and i didn't have any of the money for it. So i gathered together all of my 17th and 18th century sixpences, all 30 odd of them and i sold off the entire lot. I was going to have this coin even if it was slightly overpriced and even if i had to axe three quarters of my entire collection to get it. Some call it madness, some call it insanity, i call it fulfilling a dream. Many don't think much of the coin, but i love it, and i'd do it all again. If i was told i could have any one coin i wanted in the whole world but i couldn't ever have any more in my collection than that one, then forget the 1933 double eagle, i'd still chose this penny.








So have any of you ever waited decades to get hold of a dream coin that you'd promised yourself you'd get one day...

That is definately a fasinating penny you have there. I actually dreamed of having an oban when I was young and later switched to having a whole bloody collection of Imperial Russian Commemorative coins... but you know, price wise... they are very nasty...

I have some of the commemorative coins; that's at least a headstart, but the rest will be a complete nightmare...

I've been waiting little more than a decade to get my coin, I may have to wait until I graduate college before I buy it. 1909-S VDB in BU or better *drools*. That is a dream coin I could actually buy and not be in debt the rest of my life.

Thanks for the story! The coin is worth every penny (sixpence) you paid for it. Passion is what collecting is all about.

Here is my coin and my story. Of the few coins, etc., that I still own, this is the coin in my collection. Getting a good scan has been hard. It is a one-sixth stater, electrum, from Miletos, from the earliest days of the invention of coinage. One side has the recumbant lion, the other a crosswork of punches. I have viewed it under a stereo microscope and there is old corrosion deep inside those punches.

At an MSNS convention, I was close to leaving, just walking the floor and I stopped at a table of older coins. It was Andy Singer's. (Gordon Andreas Singer has a Ph.D. in medieval history.) He asked what I was looking for and I said, "Ionian silver." And he said, "Gold can be as cheap as silver." He showed me this. I read the flip and looked at the coin and questioned the attribution and he said that he did not know ancients, that this is how the coin came to him, and it was mine at the price -- $245, I think. I was out of money. I asked him if he would set it aside for me and let me buy it after the show and he turned me down. I was surprised and disappointed but it was his right, of course. However, another dealer told him that I am a writer and he followed me out of the floor to the lounge and brought me the coin and told me to pay him later, which I did.

I own several book about archaic coins -- the Rosen Collection, for instance -- but nothing is exactly like this. I wrote up this coin and another similar but different for the Classical and Medieval Numismatic Society newsletter, The Anvil. This coin is unique. To me, it represents the invention of coinage and is one of the earliest examples.

Yeah, there have been several.
I suppose one that comes to mind is an 1861-O Seated Liberty half dollar.

I've always been fascinated with Civil War history, and being as I live near many battlefields, I have had the oportunity to visit a lot of the places where the actual history was made.

I'd always wanted an 1861-O, ever sinse I read the history of the New Orleans Mint. One day I decided to stop dreaming about it and do something about it.
Glad I did, as it's now one of my favorite coins.

I don't type very well, using only one finger, so I'll post a link for anyone who isn't familiar with the story of these coins.

Confederate Halves

I love that coin ... and I always enjoy your history lessons, my good man

I have thought on occasion that I have indeed purchased my "dream" coin ... then someone posts a photo of another beautiful design, and I end up having yet another "dream coin". Next on my list is a Gothic Crown. Yeah, I know ... lotsa luck

Ætheling

I love the story
I never heard of your king in the romanised novels I read

Well he was certainly no Edwy the Fair (aka Eadwig, who was Athelstan's nephew). Who was supposedly caught in a rather embarrasing situation with a woman named Ælfgifu during his coronation banquet in 955. His guests were furious because they'd all turned out to give Edwy a good coronation feast and they'd all travelled miles to see him, probably days on horseback to discuss important state business. Less than half way through this meeting the young 16 year old king had disappeared upstairs with Ælfgifu (whom he later married). So Archbishop Dunstan went up to fetch him and bring him back down... he got a shock.

Needless to say Edwy had never liked the Archbishop anyhow and shortly after that incident he was exiled.

Note, always lock the door.

Silly me, this is the link of one of the dream coins that I managed to get. I just uploaded the high quality pictures very recently. Enjoy.

http://coinpeople.com/index.php?showtopic=195&pid=37416&st=0

well,when i first started collecting (about two months ago), i really,really really,wanted a 1883 liberty nickel (no cents),and a 1909 V.D.B. lincoln. and after intense study.. .. i found that i could purchase them both relatively cheap.so i hopped..at the chance. i now own oustanding examples of each..now i am searching for that next eye catcher

What a great story! That's one thing we just don't have here in the states is a thousand years of coins! As for my dream coin, when I was a kid, just starting to collect, gold and silver were going crazy, and peaked at $850/oz. and $50/oz. respectively, and I just knew that someday I wanted to own a Saint-Gaudens double eagle. Finally, in 1999 I bought my first, a common 1924 in MS-62, and that started me on my journey!

In February 2000, I was at the World Mint Directors Conference in Basel, Switzerland. The U.S. Mint announced the Leif Erickson Commemorative, a joint issue with Norway. The spokesman for the U.S. Mint said, you Europeans do not understand how thrilled we are to be able to celebrate something a thousand years old.

You can chase the past forever. I have a piece of stone from Sumeria, dated to 2500 BC. That civilization was 2500 years old already at that point, probably older, depending on how you define things.

The US does have history that goes way, way back it just depends upon what you want from it. If you want human history then i'm afraid it's not too much of a ball in the US if you want to go back thousands of years. However if you want to get into natural history and pre-history then you can happily go back to the Triassic, Jurassic or Cretaceous periods.

You guys have a heck of alot of history beneath your feet it just depends upon how you define history... human or natural?

well, there's also a long history of humans, from before the europeans arrived there....

Norway, Iceland, Greenland -same thing.


(Sorry Mike, I could not resist. )

Yeah but generally they didn't leave behind much archaeological evidence.

Where do I begin with "Dream Coin"?

Okay lets start old:



Sicily Syracuse, Agathokleos, ca 317-289 BCE

However a bit older, and a bit longer wait to buy, and quite a bit more expensive, in fact the most $$$ I have ever blown on a coin:



Attica, Athens, Tetradrachm.

I bought this a very long time ago, when I was in HS:



Egypt, Ptolemy III AE46 ca 285 BCE

But I also like this little beater piece from Asia Minor:



Ionia, Miletos ca 600BCE which maybe my oldest coin in recognised coin form.

Nah, I didn't get carried away. If I did I would have sold them.

Then, there is this lovely lady from the USA:



She held record for the most expensive coin I ever bought for 10 yrs, then for a couple of years shared record with a Scottish coin:



A groat from David II of Scotland ca. 1360 AD

But both of these coins were out done by the Attic Athens Tetradrachm in price last year.

Here is a coin I owned until 2003, that was my most expensive coin until the 1794 USA cent, I think I paid £250 for it:



England, William I, Penny, ca. 1080 AD, "Winedi on Cntl" minted in Canterbury. This was another coin that I longed for years to own when I got it.

I lost most interests in English coins except the early tokens, and parted with most of the hammered except the Berwick mint coins.

bump.

man i wish i could see some of these images in the original posts.

and no. I haven't found my dream coin yet. I've got years and years ahead of me before I can afford onne of those... whatever they are ( I know they're expensive)

No, I have not purchased my dream coin. I do have a coin that I purchased last year that I'm very very fond of. So I guess it's like a dream coin substitute. Let's see if I can find a pic.

Can't find the pic right now.

That's a nice example of a 1794 (S-28?). The Liberty Cap is one of my favorite coppers.

That is a nice looking coin. I would love to stumble on a 1943 copper Lincoln cent very few were made, as all 1943 cents were to be steel and not copper. And add this I would like to get for maybe $50.00. It'll never happen.

There was a 1600 jeton of Henri IV for sale on eBay last year --a wonderful coin, designed with an obscure allegory about the turn of the century and the passage of time. There were some doubts that the future would be bright. Henri IV tried to reunite a country divided by religious civil wars; a Protestant, he converted to Catholicism. He was assassinated anyways in 1610.

So I saw the coin and drooled over it and bid on it, but it went too high. If I ever see it again I'll spend whatever I have to get it.

I'm hoping to this week.

Personally I've got several "dream" coins. A pattern proof, double denomination coin (Especially something like a half minted on a cent.), 1895 morgan, 1983 s morgan, and the list goes on.

Should have put the above under would not afford.

But a few ones I realy wanted and did get 1934 Texas half dollar, 1895 0 morgan.

Some yes. I got a nice Old Spanish Trail commem which I always wanted for the longhorn design.


Ciao,
AWACS