Coin collecting

Many coin collectors keep their coins in a coin album. The girl in the picture uses a magnifying glass to examine a coin. She holds it by the edges to avoid marking it. The coin catalog (in front of her) gives information about different coins.

📖 In short

Coin collecting is a fun hobby where people gather coins and banknotes from different countries and times. Every coin tells a story about its country, its history, its kings, its animals and its famous buildings.

🤩 Did you know?

The study of coins is called “numismatics”.
The first coins were made about 2600 years ago.
Some rare coins are worth a great deal.
Many coins show animals and plants from their country.

🔎 Find out more

🌟 History in your hand

Old coins are a window on the past, telling us the names of kings and caliphs, old forms of writing and the year they were made. Museums have coins thousands of years old.

🔍 The dinar and the dirham

The caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan minted the first Islamic gold dinar, writing verses and Arabic words on it instead of pictures. And the silver dirham was widely used in Muslim lands.

💡 How to start

Start by collecting coins your family brings back from trips, put them in an album or a box with compartments, and write each coin's country and year beside it.

🎯 Look after them

Hold a coin by its edges so your fingerprints don't dirty it, and don't clean it with strong products, as that makes it lose value. Keep it somewhere dry.

📸 More pictures

The silver Saudi riyal; the silver Hashemite riyal

🧩 Test yourself

1 How do we hold a rare coin?

2 Who minted the first Islamic gold dinar?

3 The first coins were made about ?? years ago.

4 Which picture shows “Coin collecting”?