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Figure of the month: 800 BC

News Arnulf Hinkel, financial journalist – 01.10.2022

For thousands of years, gold has been used as jewellery and a symbol of status or wealth, as well as a store of value and a means of payment. The first gold bars were cast as early as around 2000 BC, as proven by historical artefacts. However, it would take almost one and a half millennia before the first standardised gold coin was created. In 560 BC, the Lydian king Croesus introduced the first official hard currency. He had gold and silver coins of uniform size and weight minted, guaranteeing the authenticity and reliability of this first coin currency with his stamp. But what did people pay with before the introduction of Croesus coins?

Before gold coin currency: Celtic ring money

From about 800 BC – during the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age – so-called ring money came into fashion. Made of gold or silver or other ores such as bronze, the valuable rings were often worn as bracelets or anklets. Smaller versions were simply attached to the belt or secured to clothing with a leather strap. Usually made of a single material – with gold of course the premium variant – Celtic rings sometimes featured thick nodules at regular intervals as a special feature, which significantly increased the rings’ value.

Means of payment or object of exchange?

Historians and collectors alike are still divided as to whether Celtic ring money was really a recognised means of payment or simply a valuable and easily transportable object of exchange, like jewellery. The question may seem purely academic, but it is important, especially for coin collectors who differentiate very precisely between means of payment and means of exchange. In any case, it is a fact that Celtic ring money, of which a Roman variant also later existed, rapidly lost significance with the introduction of standardised gold and silver coins.

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