Why Ancient Coins Are the Next Big Investment Trend | Dean Kinzer DSH #1144

You know, I mean, how can ancient coins be relevant?

Well, you know,

a lot of Americans know that at current time that, you know, Elon Musk is involved or trying to be a part, a department in our government.

Well, it's not the first time the world's richest man has done that.

The world's richest man in the time of Julius Caesar was Marcus Crassus.

All right, guys, we got Dean Kinzer here today, ancient coin expert from Kinzer Coins, right?

That's correct.

Absolutely.

And we're going to learn about ancient coins today.

You're probably one of the biggest experts in the country, I'd imagine.

I know a few things, and enough to be dangerous,

but I have this huge passion for it.

So in terms of my kind of collective business, I have, what's it called?

My podcast, The Ancient Coin Hour, which we talk about ancient coins.

Ancient coins are kind of a mystery to Americans.

You know, know, it's not something that is frequently collected.

And people can collect a million different things, but to me, there's not much more that has more feeling or meaning than holding something from an ancestor of yours from 1,000 years ago, 2,000 years ago.

Each one of these things has such a...

you know, important message on them that the city or the country or the empire that made them made their most important stuff on those coins so to put them out to the public.

So you knew, you know,

Augustus was going to make sure that you had food or what's it called?

We were going to take care of our enemies.

There's lots of coins with, you know, where we conquered over this other empire, you know, where they represent all this interesting stuff.

And so each one of these has a very special story to tell, and it's definitely worth knowing.

Yeah, and there's only a finite amount of some of these.

We were talking out there about some of the price points on these, and they get up there, right?

Yeah, they do.

I would tell you, definitely, Sean, that I think

in terms of the market, it's kind of a little bit underdeveloped, I would think.

American coins in the U.S.

are very well understood and very well, you know, kind of they have slabs, they have grating, they have a very structured collection style.

Ancient coins is a little different.

There's a lot of mystery to it.

First of all, because it wasn't minted here, but second of all, because maybe you don't have that direct connection to

your past from Africa or Europe or China or any one of these places.

But

these people, your ancestors, are telling you a story.

And

I just get so passionate about it.

Absolutely.

Some of these are old, man.

What's the oldest coin you got?

Well, coinage was invented in 650 BC, approximately, by the Ionians, or what is modern-day Western Turkey.

Those coins were made with electrum, so gold and silver together.

They were generally just globs, so like a ball of electrum.

But it didn't take long.

As soon as the first coin was minted, the first coin was counterfeited.

Really?

Yep.

And so they had to advance ahead of the counterfeiters.

So they started adding things to the coins to make them,

you know,

harder to duplicate.

So they'd put...

on the reverse, they'd put in Q squares or something that somebody wouldn't have to make a coin on.

They started putting like striations across.

So a glob went to something a little bit more artistic or had a different meaning.

And then as time went on, I don't know if you've ever heard of a guy named Croesus, but he was around in Lydia in the 600s or 500s BC, and he was the richest guy in the world.

And he created really denominations of coins.

So in that time period, he started breaking down these silver and gold and electrum coins into 1 16th, 1 5th, you know, so each one has a different value.

It's not just one glob.

Got it.

And so it's obviously taken off from there or it continued on down that path.

But it's, you know, what's it called?

You can keep going all the way until medieval times.

And, you know, usually my coin area of interest is from 650 BC to 1453.

at the end of Constantinople.

But, you know, there's so much, there's so much to get excited about.

Yeah, yeah.

So you like the older ones then.

Yeah, yeah.

So primarily the ones that are, you know, have the most beauty.

Greeks, you know, early Greeks, even before the Hellenism and Alexander the Great,

really,

you know, obviously with their sculptures and all that kind of stuff, incredible artists.

Well, that translated onto coins too.

And so they would have, you know, kind of their artists carve.

And, you know, your coins today are made on a machine.

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This coin itself was made with a chisel in a little die that they would turn over and hit with a hammer on molten steel or molten silver or gold.

But they took that very seriously and they made some of the most beautiful art

of that time period and they put it on coinage.

Yeah, you showed me some out there and we'll throw some images on camera.

Absolutely.

I don't know if they'll be able to see the exact detail, but man, I was holding them in my hand and it was so detailed.

Yeah, and

the details are important because they're telling a story, right?

Like so the coin that I showed you, which was a Tychee Tetradrachum, it's not just a beautiful goddess on the front.

It also represents their city.

They have the four corners of their city on her crown.

And so it means something.

The detail is important.

Yeah.

So I have a big business audience from like a monetary point of view, like investment point of view, you've been collecting these for 10, 20 plus years.

Yeah.

Like how have these performed over time?

Well, I would say that,

well, you know, like with any kind of collecting, there can be market up and down.

You know, I mean, obviously, recession, people stop paying for things that they, you know, normally would expense.

But generally, I would say upward.

And the reason that I'm on here is because I really think that the market is still developing.

So if you go to find these, to research these, there's a lot of companies in the United States that do it.

And there's a lot of companies that

are big in the business, but they don't have the kind of social media presence or kind of global reach or even nationwide reach that really impacts people.

And so I'm coming on here because I think that, you know, maybe if you start buying these now, maybe the demand goes up because they become more popular.

Is it an older industry like the people that are collecting?

So yeah, I would say my generation probably did similar to me, right?

So our fathers collected and, you know, either we stuck with it or left it.

I left it behind for a little while.

You know, it's, it's,

I'm sorry, I got a little lost.

No, you're good.

So did your father collect stuff?

Yeah, absolutely.

Sorry about that.

Yeah, so he was an avid collector.

And we used to do do coin shows and all the stuff together.

And really, that's the reason behind the name.

It's named for him.

He tried his whole life to make a business out of coins and baseball cards and what he collected and just wasn't able to cross it over.

So to me, it's really exciting.

to get the opportunity to push it forward.

And that's why it's called Kinzer Coins.

I love it, man.

Yeah, I think timing is part of it, too, because the baseball cards took off recently.

Yeah.

And there was a huge boom in the 90s and stuff like that.

But, you know, there's tons of stuff to collect.

To me, I appreciate and understand baseball cards, but I also understand and appreciate that there's things that are older than 50 years ago, and they're pretty neat.

That's why I love them.

No, it's something you can't explain, but when you hold something that historic,

you feel it.

Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely.

I think

there's When I went back into the history of my family, I looked up and found out my dad's side of the family came from Brundisium, which is a small town on the coast of Italy.

Well,

back before they were Romans, they were Greek, which maybe you didn't know, the boot of

Italy used to be Greek.

But

shoot, boot of Italy.

I did not know that, actually.

But anyway, they made coinage, and

that coinage I went out and bought right away.

because that's my ancestors.

That's sentimental to you.

Yeah, that means something.

Well, all of us have that, right?

And it doesn't just mean ancient coins themselves.

You know, I mean, there's, there's, or, or, you know, kings or whoever.

There's a lot of different ways to connect to them, right?

If you're a sports fan, you know, the Olympics were huge in Greece, right?

And so people were so proud of their Olympians that they would put their wrestlers or whatever talented athlete was on the obverse.

So if you're an athlete, you know, you can go back to the beginning of sport and have a coin that represents you.

That's cool.

I I mean, if you know, you mentioned a bunch of business guys.

Well, it's very hard to make a business, right?

It takes a lot of effort.

And so maybe you relate to one of the leaders of the past.

You know,

you want to take over the world.

Alexander the Great took over the world.

That coin was cool that you showed me.

Oh, yeah.

Alexander the Great is incredible.

And there's just so many beautiful coins.

You know, you can connect.

We talked about the astrological signs, animals, pets.

There's all kinds of animal coins that you could collect.

There's sets.

There's just a bunch of different ways to do it.

And because it's so vast, I feel like you could probably

find new ways to collect in 10, 15 years from now because you found out something new.

Absolutely.

I'm half Chinese.

Did they make coins for the emperors, the ancient emperors?

Yeah, so there's a whole market of coins.

Actually, the market in China is pretty significant for numismatics.

And I think they, I just interviewed somebody on my podcast, The Ancient Coin Hour, talking about, you know, the collecting in China and how they do it.

And I guess the world's,

or China's most successful collector

who has the most values actually a woman there.

Oh, really?

Yeah, it was really interesting.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah,

there's a big hobby.

So you can...

You can trace your history back to ancient times in China as well.

Are there any civilizations where their coins were lost over time?

They no longer exist.

I don't think so

that I can think of.

But

there's obviously all of this stuff got,

most people hid their money back then.

So they're going to put a hole in the ground and they bury it in a jar.

And that's where most of them come out of, right?

Really?

Yeah.

The reason you can touch ancient coins is because it's been in the ground for 2,000 years.

Wow.

So you can't do much to it.

But, you know,

you can't touch a

1804 American dollar that's worth a million dollars.

You can't touch it.

But you can touch an ancient coin.

Yeah, because if the wear and tear, if you just left it out, would probably be.

Yeah.

You know, but if you bury it, I guess it preserves it better.

Yeah, it does.

Yeah.

So

there's, you know, scarcity amongst certain types and stuff like that.

You know, one of the neat ones that I like to talk about, you know, for people that are really into like warrior stuff, Spartans,

during the time of Thermopylae and their kind of height, they didn't mint coins.

They didn't think they needed it.

It was a kind of a slave culture, you know, so they didn't really need the money.

Let the Athenians and all those guys make it.

But as time went on,

their power kind of decreased, and then they kind of became a part of a Greek collective, and then they became Roman, but they started minting coins.

So, you know, if you like 300, if you like some of that stuff, you can buy a coin from Sparta.

Wow.

You can buy one.

And you know what?

They're cheap.

I just watched Gladiator 2.

Hell yeah.

Yeah.

That was a good one.

Caracalla,

all of the people that are in that movie you can represent through coinage.

That's really cool.

Even the twin brothers?

Yeah, Caracalla.

Oh, that's Caracalla.

Yeah.

So you can, I mean, those are really affordable.

There's a lot of them.

Yeah, they were not liked in that movie.

No, not at all.

There's, yeah, it's just that, yeah, definitely not.

But, you know, from the first movie, even the Marcus Aurelius and Commodus, right?

You know, you can buy coins from both of those guys.

I'd imagine Marcus is one of the most expensive coins.

No.

Really?

No.

I don't think it is.

No, I think the Greek coins are more expensive.

You can buy a, I say, a worn Marcus Aurelius, maybe for $200.

Oh, okay.

That's not as much as I thought.

No, I mean, there are a number of them.

But, you know, a nice one starts to get up a little higher.

But it's not the most expensive coin that has ever hammered,

I believe.

I'm trying to remember if it's the most expensive.

was a Aureus from Brutus.

And if you don't mind, I'll tell you a little bit of background.

The most expensive ancient coin came from Brutus in 42 BC.

Brutus, who famously killed Julius Caesar and then defected from

the

Roman Republic at that point and moved to Greece, he minted coins about two years after he killed Julius Caesar.

And one, having your face on a Roman coin is a big deal.

I explained that to you.

So he put his face on the obverse, and on the reverse is Eidmar.

So he's reminding people that he killed Julius Caesar.

Eidemar.

And then there's two knives, one on each side of the center of the coin, representing,

these are the knives that we use to kill him.

That's an important piece of history, right?

That's something that should be studied and understood and enjoyed.

And so that's really, that's a, I don't know if you want to like the most badass coin in history.

Like, you know, I killed Julius Caesar.

Here's a gold Aureus, you know, gold piece that shows that I did, you know.

Yeah.

That's pretty badass.

And that got him in some trouble, right?

That was not long before the end.

Same year and everything.

Yeah.

And back then, rulers, the turnover was crazy, right?

Yes.

Yeah.

Tons of different emperors and stuff.

You know, there was a lot of fratricide.

Everybody killed each other to try and get power.

There's tons of stories like that.

If you like stories of, you know, intrigue and,

there's all kinds of stuff, the Ptolemies in Egypt were notoriously famous for marrying in family

and

stuff like that.

There's just so much to learn.

Yeah.

Who was your favorite ancient ruler and why?

I like Julius Caesar, Julius Caesar

because I think that he did.

In the end, he obviously gave himself all of the power.

But I really feel like he wasn't just a guy that was getting rich for himself or getting power for himself.

He was kind of a populist.

So a lot of his reforms and stuff that he did while he was in the Senate or was the consul had a positive effect on the people.

Land grants, food, and stuff like that.

But it seems like to me, with the amount of things that he had going on, it must have just been an incredible intellect.

Yeah.

He was a trendsetter.

So, you know, we make fun of people,

you know, dressing funny or acting funny as they're young.

You know, this next generation is terrible.

People used to say that about Julius Caesar.

Really?

He wore his clothes different, so he was different.

And so people were like, oh, this next generation is terrible.

You know, they're out of control.

They don't do things the way we do it.

So it's been happening for 2,000 years.

Same thing.

Interesting.

How can ancient coins be relevant?

Well,

a lot of Americans know that at current time that

Elon Musk is involved or trying to be a department in our government.

Well, it's not the first time the world's richest man has done that.

The world's richest man in the time of Julius Caesar was Marcus Crassus.

And Marcus Crassus was successful and wealthy because of the businesses he operated.

He was a

tax collector, and at that time Rome outsourced tax collecting.

So they would pay somebody to go get it.

And if those people go...

went and got it and then got a little bit more, that was good for him.

Pocketed it.

So

they would keep all of it.

The other thing he he was in was real estate.

He had a fire department that he created.

And so as fires were going on in the house or on people's houses, he would approach them and offer to buy the real estate.

That's wild.

What a savage.

But anyway, he was the world's richest man, got involved.

He became a part of the triumvirate.

And actually, Marcus Crassus captured and

Spartacus.

So he was involved in the military.

He was rich enough that he built his own army out of his own funds and went and ended Spartacus.

Wow.

Yeah.

And then later on, he did some other stuff.

But all of this stuff is relevant.

People have

want to know what happens as time's going on.

What

current events are important.

A lot of people talk about norms these days and how they're kind of going by the wayside and stuff.

That was a thing that happened about 2,000 years ago in Rome.

There was norms that were changing and stuff like that.

So a lot of this stuff has happened in the past and each has different results.

But we can learn a lot about what's going on now just by studying this stuff.

Absolutely.

So you know your history well, so you'd be good to ask this to does history repeat itself often?

Yeah, 100%.

There's nothing that hasn't been done.

I mean, obviously technology and stuff like that.

But the really interesting thing about ancient coins that I think that is very appealing to me,

it reminds us that there was a period of time that a long time ago that

we had a civilization like we do now.

It's just less advanced.

And then it went backward for plague and for all kinds of reasons.

You know, I think like 20% of the Earth's population died in a short period of time.

Tremendous amount of change.

But those coins reflect what he looked like.

So if you look at a medieval coin, it's a hammered, flat little silver thing with a cross down the center, and that's it.

That's it.

But ancient coins remind me kind of of you know the 15th century artists.

It reminds me of

current stuff.

It's so beautiful.

Yeah, absolutely.

How common are fakes in this industry?

Very common.

That's why we created the

podcast.

So

me and my co-host, Josh Benevento, who's actually a Grammy Award-winning opera singer.

Wow.

Very talented.

He and his wife are awesome.

But we have this podcast specifically designed for beginning collectors.

People who don't know what to buy.

People don't know

if it's real or if it's fake.

There's a lot to learn about these.

But

we're going to try to put out as much information to try to help people from making mistakes and buying stuff online that they shouldn't.

There's places that reputable dealers all over the place.

One of the...

the ones that I you know I usually recommend is the one that lent me the coins.

CNG lent me these coins to bring to you to show to you today.

So there are reputable places, but we want to help you find those and not find the fakes.

Because it's people, as soon as, like I said, as soon as they minted the first coin, they counterfeited the first coin, right?

So that's always been.

But there's tips and tricks to help you really understand what you're buying.

Yeah, I'd have no idea if those are fake or not.

Well, but I'm a reputable dealer.

I totally understand.

Any reputable dealer will tell you they they will take it back if it comes back as counterfeit.

100%.

So if you buy something from me, I'm going to return it to you if it comes back at fake.

Wow.

I'll give you all your money back.

Has that happened to you before?

Once, yeah.

But I have bought fakes in the past too.

It happens to all of us.

Yeah.

But, you know, because it's an ever-evolving thing.

But we don't want you to, what's it called?

We don't want you to do that.

We learn those mistakes the hard way.

Absolutely.

What's the most expensive coin you've seen?

Well, I've seen a couple of those Idemars, never the gold one, but the silvers.

There's another gold piece, you know, from Greece that's an incredible drawing of Pan, and it's from a place that I, if I said it out loud, it would be embarrassing.

But anyway, that's another super expensive coin, gold coin.

It's like $2 million or something.

Yeah, there's,

I'll show you a picture of it.

It's definitely in the book, and definitely,

what's it called?

But yeah, it's Pan.

Pan is the obverse, and it's just beautiful.

Damn, yeah, thanks for the book.

100 Greatest Intercoins.

Yeah, that's a

Aaron Burke wrote that.

He's a good friend, another guy that really knows what he's doing.

But it's great to see because I think that

maybe you don't know what they look like and you don't know how beautiful they are, but it's really good to have that.

Yeah, and thanks for the coin, too, man.

Yeah.

Could you explain this one that you gave me?

Of course.

So that's a Malaricin.

It's a silver coin

from about nine,

I'm going to say 968, 967

AD.

That's from the Byzantine Empire.

We call it that.

They called themselves the Romans, but they were centered in Constantinople.

This Byzantine emperor, Basil the Bulgar Slayer,

which, by the way, there is no shortage of these badass nicknames for these guys.

Bulgar Slayer.

Bulgur.

Yeah, Bulgur.

As in he attacked Bulgaria so much.

that he became the Bulgar Slayer.

That's why his nickname.

There's like the,

the previous emperor to him is called the pale face of death of the Saracens.

So they used to give each other badass names and stuff.

But that coin itself,

Basil II is probably one of the greatest emperors of Rome.

He helped bring a dying empire back from its knees, really.

And his longevity beyond extended the empire quite a bit.

But

very talented guy, very smart, very driven.

And so I think that, you know, while you're not going to

let your spear rest idle anytime soon, it just, it feels like somebody that works real hard, understands how hard it is to do well,

would connect to it.

Sounds like me.

Yeah, that's right.

And I love, you could tell it's man-made because even the edges aren't perfect.

No, no two are the same.

Yeah, which are.

You have one of one.

Yeah, which I really, you know, I like stuff like that where you could tell it's historic.

The other neat thing about that coin is at that time, the Romans didn't have access to silver.

They used to when they had bigger stretches of land like in Spain and stuff like that, but they didn't have silver at that point.

So they would either have to borrow it from somebody else, so like the Islamic countries next door, they would borrow their silver and strike it.

or they would just use the actual coins, heat them up, and overstrike over them.

Interesting.

Yeah, so that's probably Islamic silver overstruck with Constantine VIII and Basil II on it.

Wow.

Legendary.

Yeah,

it's so cool.

Were gold and silver highly valued back then?

Yep.

Yeah.

So like if you think about, you know, a bronze coin, and I'm just talking around numbers.

I know there's more detail to this, but bronze coin was probably a day's labor.

Silver coin was probably a week's labor.

you know, gold further up.

Just to make the coin?

No, no, to, what's it called?

For pay.

Oh, for pay.

Yeah, yeah.

So when you think about it, that's kind of how it broke down, right?

Interesting.

So one silver coin would last a week pay.

Well,

that would be a trade for,

if you worked for me for a week, I'd pay you a silver coin.

Got it.

Did they have bills back then, or was it all coins?

When did bills come into the picture?

Much later, much later.

Because back then, paper was really papyrus and kind of earlier forms of it, so it wasn't as frequent.

Steel or bronze and copper and all that kind of stuff was frequently used.

Got it.

It was all coins back then.

Yep, yep.

And really,

you know, just about every aspect of it

is interconnected to each other.

It's just, you know, every one of these places traded with each other.

So, you know, there's a lot of these coins that have counter stamps where somebody will take that as currency and they'll hammer over it.

and they'll put like a mark that says we accept this here.

And so you can actually travel with the coins in some cases by the counter marks marks that it has.

So you could buy an Egyptian coin that was

counter-stamped in modern-day Istanbul, and you know that that coin went with the businessman from Egypt to current Turkey.

Interesting.

Isn't that neat?

Yeah, that's super neat.

How often were coins being, I guess, changed?

Usually a new emperor, you know, he's going to turn it over.

So pretty often then.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Especially in like the second and third century A.D.

when Rome was in crisis.

I mean, it was like an an emperor every week.

Damn.

I mean, it was bad.

Yeah, they really had a...

And the other thing you can tell is at the high point, Rome has these incredibly pure silver coins, incredibly pure, pure gold.

But over time, as you get into the second and third century, the gold and the silver becomes plated.

So they're deflating the money or what's it called?

Decreasing the value and continuously do that till it just became bronze.

Right?

So you can see a coin from ancient beauty all the way to when a country's in trouble, and

you can see it very clearly in the coins.

Interesting.

And they do that with our modern-day coins now, too, right?

What do you mean?

Like, they're not worth as much as they used to be.

Well, yeah, yeah, because there's no hard commodity in them anymore.

I actually heard it was either nickel or dime.

It costs more to make it than to.

I think a penny definitely.

I don't know why they still have them, honestly.

I'd probably just make them to collect people to collect.

I've never used it.

It just feels so unnecessary to keep those totally totally yeah even change like quarters i might keep but like i don't know dimes and nickels

that's right when i was a kid though i would use them for candy absolutely now it's like i don't see that i'll just carry dollar even dollar bills i barely carry those yeah really well yeah i just carry credit cards now yeah no that's that's absolutely but you know i guess we can look at currency as a plastic now right i mean that's how we lived absolutely plastic do you collect anything modern at all because i know there's some rare like dollars and coins, right?

So, yeah, the modern stuff, I don't, I couldn't tell you much about.

I wish I could, but fortunately for me, I'm pretty well connected.

So, you know, like maybe you don't care about Alexander the Great or maybe you don't care about, you know, Julius Caesar at Cleopatra.

Well, maybe you do like shipwrecks.

You know, everybody loves a pirate.

Yeah.

And so.

There's a ton of shipwreck coins.

Really?

There's a ton of, what's it called?

Blackbeard.

Yeah.

there's a ton of uh muskets that you can buy swords all that kind of stuff to connect to uh you know the pirate times and that's that's really awesome and i know probably the best guy uh in the business for doing it so really yeah if i if you if you ever have any interest in uh those types of coins i can certainly help you or

i bought some weird historic things man i bought the hair of former presidents

okay yeah they have strands of hair really

yeah that's interesting so i got got George Washington's hair in my office.

No way.

I got to see that.

You got to show me.

Yeah, I'll send you a picture.

Yeah, please.

Yeah, I'm into weird history like that, you know?

Sounds like we're both into it.

Yeah.

A little nerdy, but it's all good, you know.

I just watched Hamilton.

Oh, you did?

The musical?

Have you seen that?

Yeah, oh, yeah, that's great.

Fantastic.

My fiancé just put me on.

It was really cool.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's a great, it's a great movie.

But, you know, history is history is so

important, right?

And that's really the kind of the case that I'm making is, you know, the coins are coins.

People collect coins.

That's fine.

But I'm not offering up.

And first of all, I'm not offering it up like I'm the single source of anything.

You know, certainly there's a lot of people that can sell you ancient coins.

But I think that there is a connection there that people can find that's very special.

And I think that knowing the history, knowing how the world operates, knowing what happens in the world is important.

And coins can help you do that.

Absolutely.

You're going to pass this off to your kids, too?

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, my daughter's already been to one show.

I love it.

And she's two and a half.

Let's go.

Starting them young, man.

Two and a half.

When I was eight or ten or whatever, my dad used to have us roll in carts through these coin shows.

You had that many coins?

Holy crap.

Had wheelbarrows of coins.

Yeah, yeah.

That's cool, though.

Did he keep a lot of what he collected or did he sell most of it?

Oh, he kept everything.

Like,

he would be hard-pressed to get rid of anything.

Really?

Yeah.

So everything.

I mean,

it borderlined on hoarding.

I remember that show.

Hoarders.

You should have applied for that.

Actually, but the thing about him, at the very least, is I think he was a little

OCD or whatever.

So at least he kept it in decent shape.

So it wasn't like, you know, he had a ton of cars, just weird interests in like fiats and Hugos and stuff.

So he we had a number of those cars I had to sell and all that kind of stuff.

But he was a very eclectic guy that really

loved history.

He was a Christian, very dedicated to Christianity.

And one of the other thing that I always mention to people about ancient coins is, you know, coins are literally mentioned in the Bible

a number of times.

I didn't know that.

Yeah, so one of the most famous things from the Bible is Jesus talking about the tribute penny, and on the cover is Tiberius, we think or Augustus and he's saying render unto Caesar what is Caesar's so that coin the tribute penny you can buy

shekels of tire which was the temple tax that was in the Jewish temple and was one of the most talked about really it was very frequently mentioned it's a shekel of tire there's a number of those you can buy one of those You can get early images of Christianity or what's it called?

The first coin with Jesus Christ on it.

Really?

Right?

So 695 AD, an Emperor Justinian II made the first coin with Jesus Christ on it.

And to me, you know, if I'm a Christian, that's pretty cool.

It was gold, and Jesus Christ is on the obverse, and then on the reverse, I think was, well, I can't remember what's on the reverse.

But anyway, Jesus Christ on the obverse.

And it's very interesting.

And I don't want to be like conspiratorial or anything, but...

It's very interesting because he minted two coins.

He minted one called

the Christ coin, and Christ looks like what we would imagine he looks like, bearded, all that kind of stuff.

He released after, and boy,

I would love to tell you the story of Justinian II because that dude's wild.

But

after he released another coin with Christ on it, but it didn't have, it didn't look like our Jesus.

It was called the young Christ.

And so a lot of historical, or some people think that Justinian II kind of used Zeus

to

have that image of Christ.

Wow.

So it's,

I'm not a conspiracy guy or anything like that, but if I do a little simple math in my head, I think

what Jesus Christ looks like, our image of Christ might have been a mixture of Zeus.

Holy crap.

Isn't that neat?

That's a crazy comparison.

I have no idea if that's 100% true, but it kind of feels true when you look at the coin because

it looks like the Jesus that we know.

That's fascinating.

Yeah, and

the young Christ coin,

that looks more like a Middle Eastern guy.

Whoa.

Yeah, short hair, curly.

That is crazy because there is always that debate.

Was he white?

Was he black?

Was he Middle Eastern?

But if it's on a coin, I mean, that's pretty compelling to me.

Yeah.

Because they wouldn't just randomly throw it.

No, I don't know.

And trust me, I'm sure that

people will look this up and all that kind of stuff.

But yeah, that's, as I understand it, that's the way it was designed.

Fascinating.

Yeah, it is.

How much is that coin?

5,000.

Dang.

I have one for you tomorrow.

Is that graded or ungraded?

Okay, so that's it.

I'm glad you brought that up.

That's a different subject about ancient coins that I think is interesting.

There is a debate amongst people that collect these is whether you slab them or don't.

So, you know, one of the things I always tell people is that, you know, a 2,000-year-old coin has been buried for 2,000 years.

So

it's pretty solid, but it's not brand new off of the press.

So you can hold it.

And that's part of the joy, right?

You don't have to look through a plastic case.

But if you prefer, you can do that as well.

And there's a couple of different services that do that.

I prefer to hold them, but if a client wants one in the slab, no problem for me.

I could see both cases.

If you want to put it up somewhere nice, slab it up.

But I like holding it too because something about just holding it and feeling that history.

That's right.

It just feels good.

That's right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I could see both cases.

I'm going to get some off you, man.

I'm excited to start my.

I'm a big collector.

I got 600 Funko Pops.

Really?

Yeah.

Oh.

I collect all sorts of histories.

Oh, I'm so excited.

Whatever I can do to help you, let me know.

If, you know, last week we were at the Orlando fun show and I got to see so many neat things.

There's so much available that maybe you don't know.

And that's the whole point.

Nice.

And so I'd be happy to, you know, share with everybody.

You know,

you can go to my website, kinzercoins.com.

That's where all my coins are for sale, but also all the videos about the history and how you learn about it.

And pretty much encompasses,

at least it's a good starting point for you if you're interested in the hobby.

I'm excited.

Definitely getting the Aquarius one.

I'll get some from China.

You got any from Ireland?

I'm half Irish, too.

Oh, so the Celts.

So Celts are,

you know, we think of Rome as a civilized, you know, kind of a

government that moves.

But above them to the north were Celts, which were more of a tribal people, right?

But they wanted currency, and they, what's it called?

They made their own currency to look like the Greeks.

So there's a number of coins that are made from the Celts north of Italy all the way up to England that they made in that time period.

A lot of history in Ireland, man.

Oh, yeah.

They went through a lot.

Yeah, they did.

Yeah, it's a,

again, that's something that you can connect with.

Yeah, absolutely, dude.

I'm very excited.

Where can people find your podcast, too?

Is it on YouTube?

YouTube and Spotify.

It's the ancient coin hour.

It's me and Josh.

And

we try to keep it shorter than an hour, but it's hard once I get winded up.

I can see how passionate you are.

Let's actually end off with one of these.

You could pick any coin

to explain to the audience, and we'll throw up a photo of it in case it's blurry.

So

this is on loan from a very good friend of mine.

This is a denarius of Julius Caesar.

And so this denarius of Julius Caesar is an important piece of history and the reason I want to share it with you.

So here, that's the denarius.

And what is on the obverse is Julius Caesar and then on the reverse is

the moneyer's name, the person that made it, and then goddess on the reverse.

Why is that important, Dean?

Well, if you know anything about Rome, Rome hated kings.

It started out in 753 BC.

It had kings for about 200 years, and then they deposed them and promised to never have kings again.

And that was a big deal.

So they formed the Senate.

And then later on,

the populism, the populist movement gave the people, the average people, a voice through the tribune of the plebs and stuff.

And so as that's going on,

that norm is being established.

Their norm was if you issued coinage, it had to, you know, it generally had a goddess or a god on the obverse, no king, because the Greeks put put kings on their coins.

And so,

you know, that was their thing.

So they, forever, they put gods on their coins.

Well, as norms start to break away and time goes by, a gentleman named Julius Caesar comes by and certainly has an impact on history.

But one of the bigger impacts that he had was he's the first person to put his own face on a coin in Rome.

And why did he do that?

Well, it signifies a lot.

And he was no stranger to, what's it called, propaganda and what what things meant.

But you know, changing from a god to a man says a lot.

And then on top of that, when he minted those coins in 44 BC, right before he died in February and March,

he put on those coins that he was a dictator dictator in perpetuity.

Whoa.

So there's in Latin it says dictator in perpetuity.

And what's it called?

So he issued those coins.

I think that may have been the straw that broke people's camel back, right?

I mean, having something that is sacred, one, no kings, two,

replacing yourself with a God or replacing a God with yourself, you're saying a lot.

And a lot of people feel like that's kind of the straw that broke.

So what you're witnessing in that coin is the changing of the world.

Really?

Think about it.

That's a lot of history in that world.

The Roman Empire didn't begin until 20 years after that.

But before it was the Republic.

And things operated differently.

It had a senate, judicial process, all that kind of stuff.

By the time it was an empire, it was a king.

It was one guy or an emperor.

And he controlled everything.

That changed the way the world works.

It's

particularly in Rome.

Yeah, and that one's 15,000, you said, right?

Yeah, but I mean, if you compare it to American coins, an 1804 dollar is worth a couple million dollars.

Nuts.

And to me, I understand that.

I totally get it.

I love that people love it.

But to me,

it's a hundred-year-old coin, you know?

Yeah.

And I understand, and maybe somebody important held it over time or whatever.

That's fine.

But to me, the value is in the history, right?

This was there when that happened.

These people were so passionate about what they were doing.

They were telling you on their coins and spreading it throughout the world, right?

And so it tells a lot more to me, or it speaks volumes.

So if you ask me what that coin's worth, you say 15 grand.

I say,

you know,

100 grand.

I think it's worth it.

I mean,

nobody would look at you crazy if you told them that you bought that coin for 100.

Nobody.

I mean, hey, Michael Jordan rookie cards are half a million.

That's right, that's right.

And that doesn't have near the history.

And there's like 500 of those, PSA 10, I think.

So I don't know how many of these there are, but.

Not 500 PSA 10.

That's great condition, though.

Yeah, oh, yeah, dude.

That's like new.

And that's another thing that you'd be surprised by is that there's a lot of really nice coins.

But also,

if you think about everybody, everybody who's interested in collecting can participate because with Rome and with a lot of these other places, they made bronze coins,

tons of them.

So you, one of the most important people in history is Constantine the Great, right?

Took the

Christianity from being illegal, legalized it, and then it became a part of the empire.

And that's really how Christianity spread.

Because if you wanted to be successful in the Roman Empire, you had to be a Christian.

And sometimes you had to be kind of the most Christian

to be successful.

And so that's why it spread like wildfire.

And it was, what's it called?

You can buy one of his coins for $25.

Damn.

And that's very historic.

The fact that Christianity survived under his watch.

Yeah,

only because of him, right?

I mean, or maybe some other emperor would have done it, but he did it.

And that's why it was important.

And really, the sprouting of that religion and it becoming a primary force in the world, or a primary and secondary force in the world, is

you can tell it in coins.

I love it.

Dean, it's been awesome.

Where can people find you and potentially get a coin?

Yeah, absolutely.

So

mostly on Instagram.

I have all the different types.

They're all at Kinzer Coins.

My website is www.kinzercoins.com.

And the podcast is The Ancient Coin Hour.

I love it.

Link it below.

Thanks so much for coming, man.

Thanks for watching.

I appreciate it.

Thank you so much.

Forward to buying stuff from you.

Absolutely.

Thank you so much.

Check them out, guys.

See you next time.