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The Yale Alumni Magazine is owned and operated by Yale Alumni Publications, Inc., a nonprofit corporation independent of Yale University.

The content of the magazine and its website is the responsibility of the editors and does not necessarily reflect the views of Yale or its officers.

Old Money
November/December 2004
photograph ©Jake Wyman

Few outside the field of numismatics know that the Yale Art Gallery has the largest university collection of coins in the country: roughly 100,000 objects, at the heart of which are 25,000 pieces from the ancient world.

Classics professor and coins and medals curator William E. Metcalf coordinated Yale’s recent purchase of 4,100 coins of Greek and Roman origin (some of which are pictured here) from the eminent German historian Peter R. Franke. Almost every Roman emperor is represented in Franke’s collection, from Caligula and Nero to Trebonianus Gallus and Volusian. "The discovery of coins can date buildings—whole towns," Metcalf says. "In a world in which there were no other media and no other means of presenting your message, these objects came into your hands in a way you had to look at.”

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