 The Festival of Coins is brought to you in partnership with the Numismatic Guarantee Corporation and the Royal Mint Museum. Okay, so welcome to this Festival of Coins session. Today we're joined by Roger Bland. Roger is the president of the Royal Numismatic Society. He's got a vast numismatic knowledge, having worked for the British Museum, initially in the Coins and Medals Department and later as the keeper of the Department of Britain, Europe and Prehistory. He is the editor of the Roman Imperial Coins series. He's been an editor for the series of Coinhards from Roman Britain and indeed Roger has written hundreds of articles and publications on numismatics over the years and has received many accolades and awards including an OBE in 2008 for services to heritage. So Roger, thanks so much for joining us today. It's a pleasure Matty. Thank you. I wondered if we could start and we might need quite a while to go through this so I guess the summary of your career in Coins. How did it all kind of begin before? It began really quite a long time ago, probably about 60 years ago because I had a grandfather who was a great collector of Anglo-Saxon and Norman coins called Francis Elmore Jones and he really got me interested in them when I was quite young. He said he didn't want to encourage another collector who might be a rival to him in Anglo-Saxon coins so he encouraged me to be interested in Roman coins which were a lot more affordable for a small boy than Anglo-Saxon coins were then and I was very lucky. He introduced me to the firm of Baldwin's who was still with us in central London and I used to be allowed to go down on Saturday mornings from our house in west London on a bus on my own. This was really exciting to Baldwin's shop on Saturday mornings and I usually was able to find some fairly common they're usually late Roman coins that I was able to add to my collection because there was a delightful gentleman sadly died quite really quite young called Albert Baldwin who was head of the firm at that time used to look after me but later my grandfather he had a rather sad sadly his coin collection was stolen from his home and a few years later most of it the greater part of it was actually recovered by the police which was great but he decided he didn't want to keep it in his home anymore he didn't have any confidence that that was going to be safe place for it so it so he was allowed to keep it in the coin department at the British Museum and he used to go and work on it there and also do other jobs for the then curator the late Marion Archibald and she got him to help her for example on cataloging studying new hordes of coins for example it came up and I was allowed to go along and help as well which was which was a you know terrific privilege for somebody somebody of my age so that's how really how it all started wow okay so um so since then you've you've always collected so is it would you say roman coins are your your specialty yes they they are they are um I did them I did I did collect when I was younger of course um my collection was stolen actually as well it was nothing like my grandfather's collection um it was a pretty modest collection but it was still um two or three hundred coins I think and um that was when I was about 18 or so and um I was just I'd just gone to university as actually and um I had other priorities at that stage and luckily we had some insurance and um I used the insurance money to buy a motorbike instead okay but when I did uh when I was lucky enough to get a job with the British Museum or well I think I it would have been theoretically possible to have carried on collecting coins uh I don't think it's a very good idea if you do work there to to have your own collection because clearly you're there's the possibility uh you might forget who you're collecting for is it for your employer your institution or is it for your own collection yeah basically I could I knew that um I didn't need to I could never rival a British collection so there was really no point um and I had a motorbike so that that was quite you know that was very useful excellent okay so um throughout your career you've you've obviously um studied the history of not just coins but history and archaeology in general yeah so how do you how do you think numismatics kind of fits into the the world of history well uh some some periods in history and I think Roman period is a is a really good example but um quite a lot of other periods as well the coins give us really interesting information about the about the history of the time and um the period that I suppose I've spent longest studying um is is the the the later Roman Empire in the third century AD and um we have an abundance of coins that survive from that period and very little uh surprisingly little written history from that period so the coins are really give us really important evidence for um what was happening um at that time and their tangible evidence aren't they I mean it uh of of of life at that time and people are really surprised when they learn that um coins of um the third century AG or third and fourth century AGs um are really common in this country um found really quite commonly and um they're not particularly expensive to buy and one of the reasons why they're so common is because um they turn up in hordes um in huge and potentially in huge numbers up to 50 000 coins or more um have been discovered in hordes from that period um and that when I was lucky enough to get a job at the British Museum um after university um that was what I spent most of my time on was actually studying the hordes that that were being discovered in ever greater numbers by people using metal detectors back in the um early 1980s um and those were generally most of those were brought to the British Museum um uh under the old um treasure trail rule to be studied and um that uh when you have a horde of um several thousand coins comes in that that's gonna take that's quite a big job and that that that uh there was there were times when actually we were having a job keeping up the sheer volume of hordes that were coming in and it's still the same today in fact probably slightly more than anything and would you say that these horn uh these hordes and the the discoveries of coins by people with metal detectors do you think they're shedding new light on history kind of they are absolutely um we have I mean we're extremely lucky in this country that uh we um have really um there's a um it's perfectly possible to legal to use metal detectors here um in a lot of countries it isn't and we um if if they find a horde of coins there's a requirement a legal requirement for them to be reported but we're also very interested in recording coins that are just found one at a time as well um it's completely voluntary to to report those but we strongly encourage um the people who make the discoveries with metal detectors to report them and we've recorded um well over a hundred thousand um of of those um now since the portable antiquity scheme was set up in 1997 um and uh we have five and a half thousand hordes are known from this country and the last project that I did before I retired from rish museum a few years ago um I just started a project um with a group of colleagues uh to have a really thorough investigation of this huge number of hordes um that are being found from this country uh and what they tell us about about life in roman britain at this time and they they potentially can tell us a lot because um uh they give us an idea of how widely people were using coins um and um what sort of coins they were using and what sort of coins found their way into this country because mostly um these were coins that were being made in Rome and elsewhere and being imported into this country only for um a few brief periods where they actually making coins um in britain in in the roman period so yes there's there's a huge amount um that we can learn from from studying um these coins and I'm a specialist in roman periods that's what I'm talking about but it's just as important um to study coins from the iron age from the earlier period they they can we have no written history from that period so the coins absolutely provide us with vital evidence for um what was happening in britain in that period and then in the into the medieval period again the coin the coin finds so incredibly important for understanding um life in those periods as well yeah okay and what would you say um you know you said there's five and plus hordes being discovered what could you pick one that was particularly remarkable or sticks in the memory well um I suppose uh quite soon after I arrived in the british museum in 1983 um we had an at what's still the largest horde of roman coins that's been found um in this country um from welcher um uh roman town called cuneteo and um that was uh 52 and a half thousand coins it was a huge job um to firstly to clean those coins and then to study it and which I did with um my colleague edward bezley um who recently retired from the national museum of wales and that was um that was a one or two year project um just to get just to understand that um to study all those coins and we published a catalogue um which um uh is still quite used is still used as as a basic work of reference for the coinage of that period because um uh there aren't any up-to-date um reference books for for the for the coins of that particular period from the 250s and 260s ad so that was um uh cuneteo horde was one I think the most spectacular horde um of coins that came in while I was working which museum has to be the uh enormous horde of coins and jewelry that was found um in suffocate um village called hoxham in 1992 and that had 15,000 gold and silver coins from the very late from the very last period of rembryton but also 200 items of gold and silver jewelry including a wonderful little old silver statuette of a of a tigress um a pepper pot made to look like a roman empress helena lots of um spoons with the names of the owner on it um all sorts of things and that that's um that's now on show in the British Museum and that's a fact that was a fantastic um uh find and there was enormous huge amount of interest in that in that one yeah excellent okay so um just moving on to the your role with the royal numismatic society can you tell us about about your role but also about the society and why um collectors might want to join yeah well it's um actually one of the oldest societies um of a numismatic societies in the world um and uh it it's over 150 years old now um and um it's um uh um it we publish a journal every year we have a series of meetings um in london last year we had to have them online but we're hoping that we'll be able to have uh go back to having physical meetings again from our new session which starts in october and we've got over 500 members who are um about half of them are from this country and about half of them uh from all around the world and it's a good way of um getting to know other people who are interested in coins um the journal publishes um you know um it's it's one of the main journals of numismatics that's published um in the world and there's always a lot of material in that and um we also have um regular um newsletters that come around by email now as well so um if you're seriously interested in coins um it it it's a it's a good society to join and uh there's a second national society the british numismatic society which has a focus on coins from from or found in britain um but they're all numismatic society our remit is to cover coins and medals from right across the whole world so um and they're we're sister societies we have a joint library which um it's kept in the uh university of london the warburg institute and we do a number of things um together they they too have meet regular meetings but they and they too publish um a very um important journal but if you're seriously interested in coins um it one of both of those societies it's it's it's a well worth joining and the subscriptions are quite reasonable yeah okay um and would you say um so would you say you know membership's open to to all to anyone you don't need absolutely no we welcome we we don't uh we we don't have any um uh particular requirements um except an interest in numismatics we we were very happy to welcome anyone and we're particularly happy to welcome younger people as well and if they'd like to join um you know interesting coins has I think gone up and down a bit over the last sort of 40 or 50 years when I when I was quite young um the uh decimal coins that just come in and that produced a sort of huge in increase in in collecting and I think it's sort of tailed off a bit now um the the sort of um what should we say the sort of less um the less serious end of the market if you like but I think what we have now is sort of quite a big bunch of really quite serious um people who are really quite seriously interested in in coins and it's it's unusual in a study of coins as being one area where people who aren't professionals can make really important contributions to the study of the subject and have done um of course you know until about um 100 years ago everyone was an amateur studied coins there weren't any professionals but um we still have a very strong tradition of people calling collectors making really important contributions to the study of the subject I mean the only other subject I can think of that's a bit like that is astronomy where you know also you have that amateur tradition as well yeah fantastic okay so if if a collector was um wanting to find out that the history and the stories behind some of the coins in their collection um what kind of tips could you give them to kind of just take it to the next level yes that's a a good question Matthew I mean um I think that um you're probably if you're uh going to start most people do end up by um specializing in collecting the coins of a particular area or particular period so you'll probably want to start by um getting hold of um one or two reference books for those coins so that at least you can see what coins were being made in uh you know in in in in Britain um let's say in the um anglo-saxon period or something or whatever period it might be you'll probably start with with some fairly basic reference works um then um you can take it really as um and you'll also probably if you're a collector you'll want to start um uh contacting um people who do in in those coins as well um a few years ago it would have been a case of subscribing to um coin dealers lists nowadays more and more it's a question of looking online because um nearly nearly everyone puts their offerings up online these days and catalogs printed catalogs are becoming a bit rarer because of course they are quite expensive to produce it's very easy to put coins online and I study the coins I studied the Roman period I'm amazed by just how many coins there are now online and how easy it is actually to find them and search them um with with search tools um uh like like Google there's some also some excellent websites I I was mentioning um reference books and they're still useful but um there's some very good reference sites um online as well um and um then I think it would be if you're you are interested I'd certainly recommend joining a society yeah um if nothing else in order to have a chance to to meet other people who who collect coins yeah okay that's great okay and one one final question for you Roger um what do you think the future holds for numismatics and you know the study of coins well it's it's changed an awful lot um just in the last um 20 years I think the internet's had an enormous impact actually uh um and of course the other the other thing that goes alongside I get the impression and this isn't um this isn't scientific at all but it's just an impression that there's more and more coins are appearing on the market and I think that is related to the fact that there are a lot of discoveries um of coins coming on the market um I I know something about what happens in Britain um of course coins are found all over all over Europe and all over the world um but you know huge numbers of coins are being found found in Britain but but in other countries as well and um a lot of those do find their way onto the market so and a lot of those find their way onto onto the web so there's a great deal of material out there um the webs really change the way one can work and study coins because it's um it's made a huge amount of uh material really high quality photographs of coins are really easy to um download now from the internet so if you're really a serious scholar of coins it's it's um really changed the way you work in the old days um I used to go around and study coins in collections in museums around Europe and the United States and take photographs nowadays um more and more museums are putting their collections online um and as I said there's lots of coins from um appear on on on the market that you can find online as well um so it's it's um there's lots of potential if you're if you become interested in a particular um series of coins and there's there's a huge amount to be done actually um out there and um so many more coins appearing all the time um uh it's it's really quite hard to um I've been um I wrote a study coins of um one emperor called in the third for and I wrote my thesis in 1991 and I never got around to publishing it and I'm trying to do that now 30 years on and um but I need to keep it up to date and I found almost three times as many coins I think um now as I knew in 1991 because there's just so much material out there so there's a lot if you're seriously interested in in coins I think there's lots of opportunities there yeah yeah okay okay yeah well that that's um fantastic so uh thanks so much for your time um this afternoon Roger um really interesting to talk to you and um I think I'm going to go and uh find uh a subscription form for the Royal Numies Magic Supplies okay okay well we'd love to have you as a member man yeah okay so thanks so much for your time okay not at all nice to talk to you bye bye thank you don't miss the