The First Coins Minted in Ireland It is fairly well accepted that Sihtric, Hiberno-Norse King of Dublin was the first to mint coins in his own name in Ireland. To date, all 7 phases of Hiberno-Norse coin production in Ireland have been attributed to Dublin rulers. But, who brought the first coins into Ireland and…
Introduction Arabic, or Islamic, coins are frequently mentioned in the archaeological literature of the 19th and 20th centuries but there are few accounts that discuss these beautiful coins as a group – which probably reflects our preoccupation for coins with Latin inscriptions. They are found at many dig sites and their ‘deposition dates’ show a…
The first locally produced Irish coinage was the so-called Hiberno-Norse coinage which was first minted in Dublin in about 995-7 AD under the authority of Sihtric III (aka Sihtric Silkenbeard), the Norse King of Dublin. There is no evidence for the native Irish producing coins before this, so it is likely that their economy was not coin-based. The…
I am frequently asked the following questions and I openly admit to struggle to answer them adequately – the negative side of being a generalist dealer (constantly buying old attic finds and selling oddments from same), as opposed to being a specialist numismatic expert like so many of my much more knowledgeable customers. Who ordered…
One of the more difficult aspects of coin collecting is the language barrier one encounters when trying to decipher the legends (text around the edges) of coins. Very few of us speak Latin and truncated Latin still appears on British coins today. As we all know, British coins circulated alongside Irish coins in this country…
The Old Currency Exchange is a specialist dealer and valuer of Irish & GB coins, tokens and banknotes 