Pocket Change Blog
Pocket Change is the official blog of the American Numismatic Society.
This week, the American Numismatic Society uploaded images of its 100,000th object into our online database MANTIS. The lucky coin was an aureus, a gold Roman Imperial coin from AD 196–211. It features a portrait of the empress Julia Domna on the obverse and the goddess Cybele seated in a chariot drawn by four lions on the reverse. Cybele was known as Magna Mater or the Great Mother, and her cult derived from ancient Asian beliefs that were absorbed into the Greco-Roman pantheon. Julia Domna was herself born in Syria so the coin is in many ways a tribute to Roman multiculturalism.
ANS, 1955.191.22
Our MANTIS database gives users…
Coins and video games were connected for the first time with the arrival of Computer Space (1971) and Pong (1972), the first…
The Irish-American printer John Dunlap of Philadelphia produced this broadside in 1778/1779 at the direction of John Gibson, the auditor general…
This is part an ongoing series that answers your questions about our collections. If there’s something you would like to know…
The Pulitzer Prize(s) have been awarded annually since 1917 for excellence in journalism, arts, and letters. They are the legacy…
Library of Congress
The United States Sanitary Commission was a relief agency created to support soldiers that fought for the Union…
Today marks the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s (1809-1865) assassination. He was shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre during…
Library of Congress
The 150th anniversary of the surrender of General Robert E. Lee’s Confederate army at Appomattox was commemorated in New York…
Welcome CBS viewers! Thanks to producer Alan Golds and company for featuring the ANS in a great little segment about the penny…
The New York Public Library has launched a new website for its ample collection of digital images. There is a variety…
The Chinese Junk “Keying” (N. Currier, 1847) Hand-colored Lithograph | Met
The Keying was a three-masted Chinese trading junk that sailed from…
John Camden Hotten (1832-1873) was one of the liveliest characters in British letters during the mid-nineteenth century. A bibliophile and…