Coin Encyclopedia
Search and identify coins from around the world — with country, denomination, metal, mint, history, and how to tell them apart.
Canadian Colored Maple Leaf
A colorized variant of Canada's iconic Maple Leaf bullion coin, applying vivid printed designs over the standard maple leaf or themed reverse to create eye-catching collector editions.
Canadian
Cook Islands Colored Silver Coins
A broad category of colorful commemorative silver coins issued under the sovereignty of the Cook Islands, covering religious, historical, and pop-culture themes aimed at collectors worldwide.
Africa & Oceania
French 5 Francs "Napoleon"
A large silver crown-sized coin bearing the portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte, first as First Consul and later as Emperor, marking France's decimal franc system's early flagship silver denomination.
European
Straits Settlements Silver Dollar
A large British colonial silver dollar struck for Singapore, Penang, and Malacca, created to give the Straits Settlements a standardized coin after decades of competing foreign trade dollars.
Asian
Papal States Scudo
The principal silver coin of the Papal States, bearing the portrait or arms of the reigning pope alongside religious imagery, struck for centuries until the Papal territories' loss of independence.
European
Aurelian Antoninianus
Radiate coin of Aurelian, the soldier-emperor who reunited the fractured Roman Empire and enacted a major coinage reform introducing standardized silver content marked with XXI or KA.
Ancient
Byzantine Gold Tremissis
A small gold fractional coin worth one-third of a solidus, widely struck across the early Byzantine world and imitated by Germanic successor kingdoms in the former Western Roman Empire.
Ancient
Chinese Wu Zhu Cash
One of history's longest-running coin types, cast continuously for over seven centuries across multiple Chinese dynasties after its introduction under Emperor Wu of Han.
Ancient
Sassanian Silver Drachm
The standard silver coin of the Sasanian Persian Empire, featuring an elaborately crowned king's portrait and a Zoroastrian fire altar with attendants, struck for over four centuries.
Ancient
Vijayanagara Gold Pagoda
A small, thick gold coin of the South Indian Vijayanagara Empire, typically showing Hindu deities or a bull, whose type became so trusted it was widely imitated as the standard South Indian trade "pagoda."
Asian
1939-S Jefferson Nickel
A scarce San Francisco Jefferson Nickel from the early series, notable for being one of two tougher 1939 issues and for a well-known doubled-die reverse variety showing a doubled MONTICELLO.
United States
1974 Aluminum Cent
An extremely rare experimental pattern struck in aluminum as a potential replacement for the copper cent amid rising metal costs, almost none of which were legally released to the public.
Errors & Varieties
1933 Double Eagle
One of the rarest and most legally contested U.S. coins, struck but never officially released for circulation after the nation left the gold standard; a single example sold for over $18 million.
United States
1873-CC Seated Liberty Quarter (No Arrows)
One of the great rarities of the Seated Liberty quarter series, this tiny Carson City issue predates the mid-1873 arrows-at-date modification and survives in only a handful of known examples.
United States
Greek Drachma
The modern national currency of Greece from shortly after independence until the adoption of the euro, reviving the name of the ancient Greek unit and featuring classical and historical imagery.
European
Maundy Fourpence
The largest of the four Royal Maundy coins, a small silver fourpence descended in value from the medieval groat, struck annually for the monarch's ceremonial Maundy Thursday alms distribution.
British
Third Farthing
An extremely small denomination worth one-twelfth of a penny, struck mainly to serve the currency needs of the British colony of Malta across the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
British
Liberty Head Half Eagle ($5)
A widely produced 19th-century gold five-dollar coin bearing Christian Gobrecht's Coronet Head design, struck across nearly every major American branch mint of the era.
United States
Mende Dionysos on Donkey Tetradrachm
A striking Classical-era silver tetradrachm from the wine-city of Mende, showing the wine-god Dionysos reclining drunkenly on a donkey, one of ancient coinage's most whimsical designs.
Ancient
Domitian Denarius
Silver coin of the last Flavian emperor, Domitian, whose lengthy autocratic reign produced abundant, well-struck denarii before his assassination and damnatio memoriae.
Ancient
Eukratides I Gold Stater (Baktria)
A gold stater of Eukratides I, the powerful Greco-Bactrian king best known for issuing the largest gold coin surviving from antiquity, depicting the divine twins Dioskouroi on horseback.
Ancient
Louisiana Purchase Gold Dollar Commemorative
A 1903 commemorative gold dollar issued for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, struck in two varieties featuring the portraits of Thomas Jefferson and William McKinley.
Commemorative
Type 2 Indian Princess Gold Dollar
A short-lived, notoriously weakly struck redesign of the U.S. gold dollar, prized today for its brief production window and the striking difficulties that led to its quick replacement.
United States
Austrian Corpus Christi Thaler
A devotional silver thaler struck by Austrian ecclesiastical authorities to mark the feast of Corpus Christi, blending religious procession imagery with the standard large-thaler format of the era.
European