Numismatics

Numismatics is the study or collection of currency, including coins, tokens, paper money, medals, and related objects.

Specialists, known as numismatists, are often characterized as students or collectors of coins, but the discipline also includes the broader study of money and other means of payment used to resolve debts and exchange goods.

The earliest forms of money used by people are categorised by collectors as "odd and curious", but the use of other goods in barter exchange is excluded, even where used as a circulating currency (e.g., cigarettes or instant noodles in prison). As an example, the Kyrgyz people used horses as the principal currency unit, and gave small change in lambskins; the lambskins may be suitable for numismatic study, but the horses are not.^{[dubious – discuss]} Many objects have been used for centuries, such as cowry shells, precious metals, cocoa beans, large stones, and gems.

First attested in English in 1829, the word numismatics comes from the adjective numismatic, meaning 'of coins'. It was borrowed in 1792 from French numismatique, itself a derivation from Late Latin numismatis, genitive of numisma, a variant of nomisma meaning 'coin'. Nomisma is a latinisation of the Greek νόμισμα (nomisma) which means 'current coin/custom', which derives from νομίζειν (nomizein) 'to hold or own as a custom or usage, to use customarily', in turn from νόμος (nomos) 'usage, custom', ultimately from νέμειν (nemein) 'to dispense, divide, assign, keep, hold'.

Throughout its history, money itself has been made to be a scarce good. Many materials have been used to form money, from naturally scarce precious metals and cowry shells through cigarettes to entirely artificial money, called fiat money, such as banknotes. Many complementary currencies use time as a unit of measure, using mutual credit accounting that keeps the balance of money intact.

Modern money (along with most ancient money) is essentially a token – an abstraction. Paper currency is perhaps the most common type of contemporary physical money. However, goods such as gold or silver retain many of the essential properties of money, such as price fluctuation and limited supply, although these goods are not controlled by one single authority.

Coin collecting may have possibly existed in ancient times. Augustus gave "coins of every device, including old pieces of the kings and foreign money" as Saturnalia gifts.

Petrarch, who wrote in a letter that he was often approached by vine diggers with old coins asking him to buy or to identify the ruler, is credited as the first Renaissance collector. Petrarch presented a collection of Roman coins to Emperor Charles IV in 1355.