Ancient coin collection dating from 400BC stolen from remote South Australian farmhouse

Retired farmer Allan Lowe, 79, hopes to get his coin collection back after
it was stolen from his farm on Sunday.(Supplied: Geoff Lowe)

by Jodie Hamilton

An ancient coin collection stolen from an isolated rural farming property near Ceduna on South Australia's west coast included Pantheon coins dating back to 400BC as well as rare Islamic glass tokens.

Retired farmer Alan Lowe, 79, discovered his fireproof safe containing about 1,000 rare and valuable ancient coins worth about $40,000 had been stolen from his home on Sunday after a day out.

Mr Lowe had collected the coins for 43 years and had carefully locked them away in the safe.

But thieves took the whole safe and its key, kept in a separate cupboard.

"I had a safe it would take four people to lift, and they got it outside and got it into the back of a ute or something," Mr Lowe said.

Historic connections

Coins similar to those belonging to Mr Lowe which were stolen from his farmhouse.(Supplied: SAPOL)

His collection included ancient Pantheon coins dating back to 400BC, Byzantyne Roman, Russian wire coins, Indian, Middle Eastern and African kissi pennies, as well as Australian and New Zealand pennies that he'd bought from various Australian coin dealers.

Mr Lowe was drawn to numismatics for the history and connection to ancient civilisations.

"Back in 1980 I bought a few Roman coins off this chap and I thought, 'Gee whiz, 2,000-year-old coins and here am I in Ceduna buying the jolly things'," he said.

"I'd like to have a machine that you could plug it in and see the people who used them, but of course that's not possible."

Extremely rare

Some of his coins were extremely rare.

"The Islamic glass coins have Arabic inscriptions, and I had a few blue and yellow ones from the Fatimid [dynasty] which was part of Egypt from the 11th century," Mr Lowe said.

The Islamic glass coins.(Supplied)

"I asked one dealer, 'How rare are they?' and he said, 'Well, most dealers had seen a 1930 penny but they haven't seen a glass coin' — so pretty rare."

Police superintendent Paul Barr said police did not know if it was a targeted theft.

"The rural property is somewhat out of the way, so we're not sure if someone has had some knowledge or whether it's just been a stroke of luck on the part of the people who have engaged in this crime," he said.

Coins difficult to sell

Adelaide coin dealer and SA Numismatic Society member Mark Nemtsas said the coins would be difficult to on-sell in Australia.

"Some of the coins described are coins we know a lot about, but there are others that are unique and not very widely collected here in Australia," he said.

Mr Nemtsas said the collection contained some medieval Indian coins.

"India has a history of minting coins dating back to 400 BCE, right up to the current day and they're not widely collected here in Australia," he said.

"It's a very specialised collection, and not something you see very often.

Coin dealer Mark Nemtsas with some ancient coins at this Adelaide store.
(Supplied: Mark Nemtsas)

"I'm a coin collector at heart, so if that gentleman had brought that collection in here and showed me, he would have made my week because I love looking at interesting historical coins like the ones that he has unfortunately lost," he said.

"I don't think you would be able to sell these online they are so distinctive. It's going to be obvious where they've come from.

"The coin dealing community in Australia is so small that pretty much every coin dealer in Australia will know about this within 48 hours because the coins are very distinctive."

First published at ABC News Ayre Peninsula, July 28, 2023