THE EARLIEST coins we know of in the West come from what today is Turkey. They were made from placer nuggets of gold or silver, or a naturally occurring alloy of the two called ‘electrum,’ all of which could be pulled from the rivers and streams of that part of the world and stamped with some symbol of authority. So how did coins get from this rather humble beginning to where we are now? The story is actually quite interesting, and many of the coins related to it are still affordable today.
The City-States
Ancient Greece was not the unified nation it is in our modern world. Rather, it was a collection of small nations, what we call city-states, because each had one central city and influence in the area immediately around it. But some of them were built near areas where a precious metal could be mined – Athens being a prime example – and as trade expanded, each city-state
