About This Coin
A copper-silver coin recovered from the round stone feature on Lot 5 during the Season 11 premiere, one of three coins the team pulled from the same feature on the same morning. Rick Lagina recovered the coin with Gary Drayton operating the metal detector. At the laboratory, Emma Culligan's XRF returned a composition of approximately 94 percent copper and about 5 percent silver, with no tin and no lead. "Normally, Roman coins have tin and lead, which I am not seeing in this one," Culligan noted. "So, not Roman, but it is not modern, either, because it has no modern coin alloys." The reading left the coin unclassified at that point in the episode.
Later in the same episode, numismatist Sandy Campbell examined the coin at the Interpretive Centre and reversed the laboratory verdict. He read a male portrait on the obverse, with a pointed chin and a larger nose, and identified two conjoined figures on the reverse. "This is probably, you know, BC," he told the team, asked whether he was 100 percent certain, and answered yes. Campbell described the design as very pronounced for a coin more than 2,000 years old, calling it possibly the oldest coin ever found on Oak Island.
Pre-Christian Roman coinage circulated for centuries after striking, and ancient coins continued to turn up in medieval contexts far from their original mints. Campbell observed in a later season that Roman coins were actively traded as currency well into the 1500s across Europe and the New World, including at sites associated with the Knights Templar in Iceland.
Three further coins came out of Lot 5 the same day. From the morning search, a second Roman coin Campbell dated to between 100 and 300 AD, and a brass piece bearing what the team described as a woven or chain-link pattern, given competing identifications by Emma Culligan as a 13th-century French denier and by Sandy Campbell as possibly 6th to 8th-century Indian. Later that day, with Marty Lagina and Craig Tester now on site, Rick recovered a fourth coin Campbell identified as a 16th-century British Tudor portcullis piece. A half Roman coin had been recovered from Lot 5 the previous season, and additional Roman coinage has surfaced there in subsequent seasons. The lot has no recorded history of habitation.
Historical Context
Recovered Season 11, Episode 1 (On the Money), Lot 5 round feature, morning surface search. Gary Drayton on the metal detector; Rick Lagina recovered the coin. Emma Culligan XRF: 94 percent copper, 5 percent silver, no tin or lead, no modern alloys (initial reading: not Roman, not modern). Sandy Campbell, later in the same episode, identified male portrait and conjoined figures, dated the coin to BC, more than 2,000 years old.
Where It Was Found
Found at Lot 5 (circular depression) — Oak Island, Nova Scotia, Canada.
