ANCIENT COINS DONATED TO UNIVERSITY

At the end of a talk for the American Numismatic Society on using coins in the classroom, History Assistant Professor Jane Sancinito made an appeal to collectors who find fakes mixed in with real coins they have bought at auction.

"Please remember your local universities," Sancinito said. "Many of us would love to have replicas that we could bring into classrooms and hand to students, because replicas are usually the right weight, they"re the right size, and they have all the decoration of the originals."

Shortly after the virtual talk Sancinito gave last March, David Menchell, a New York physician and serious collector who teaches workshops on coins and medals, sent her a reproduction set of ancient Roman coins. He followed up with an offer to buy the university genuine coins for study – and asked Sancinito what she wanted.

Once she got over her shock, Sancinito, who does research on the Roman Empire in the third century, asked for some coins from that period. She also told Menchell it would be "awesome" if the collection included some coins from a group found together at a single archaeological site, known as a "hoard."

In August, the first 38 coins – 37 Roman and one Greek – arrived to form the core of the Dr. David Menchell Coin Collection, now in the special collections section of O"Leary Library. It includes bronze and silver coins from the third century B.C.E. (Before Common Era) to the third century C.E. (Common Era) and includes most of the well-known Roman emperors.

It also includes six Roman denarii from the Little Busby Hoard, a group of 392 silver coins that were buried in the early 200s in Yorkshire, England. The coins in the Menchell Collection were issued under different Roman emperors between 140 C.E. and 180 C.E.

Sancinito, who teaches courses including Ancient Greek History, Roman History and Civilization, World History to 1500 and Pirates of the Mediterranean, is already using the coins in her classes. Through the Emerging Scholars Program, she also engages with one student each year in more intensive research into ancient coins.

Brandon Bulman, a sophomore history major studying Greek history with Sancinito this fall, says it"s "pretty cool" to get to handle and inspect coins from the collection.

"It"s weird to think that people hundreds and hundreds of years ago used them, and now they"re here," he says.

To read the complete article, see:
Ancient Coins Donated to University by Collector (https://www.uml.edu/news/stories/2025/ancient-coins.aspx)

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