The TCx3 Collection

The TCx3 collection features 118 Celtic coins ranging from 300 BC to 40 AD. Minted in the late Iron Age, Celtic coins are some of the most beautiful and mysterious coins ever made. The Celts didn’t leave any records behind for us, giving us endless topics to research and debate. A significant part of the collection is composed of coins where we don’t even know what’s being depicted, or which way to orient the coin. It’s the mystery of not knowing that calls me to these coins.

Collecting means assembling a set of coins in which each enhances the significance of the others. Having limited resources helps define a purpose that brings coherence to a collection. Finding that purpose means assembling a collection in your mind before purchase. Serving that purpose makes it hard to find coins on which to spend money and ensures years of enjoyment in learning, searching and purchasingLouis B. Butterfield

I believe the purpose of a collection is to tell stories, and almost every coin in the collection is part of one. The TCx3 collection has two main themes. One is an exploration of the “boat and tree” image evolution, where the same basic image was reused over decades with subtle modifications and adaptations. The other is the stories told by the earliest British gold coinage. Little is known about the tribes who inhabited Britain before the Romans came, and the coins they left behind are sometimes the only proof they ever existed.

A Note About Dating

All of the coins in the collection have a date range in which they are thought to be minted.  I’ve used the narrowest range possible taken from the most recent works on the subject.  Where two coins fall within the same range but have a clear chronological ordering, I’ve adjusted the ranges to show the ordering.  This can unfortunately make the dates appear more accurate than they are generally accepted to be, but I consider the benefit of temporally ordering the coins to be worth the risk. It will do for the purposes of this web site, but be aware that if you depend on the dates given for your own research, then you should go back to the academic sources and take the dates from there.

About the TCx3 Collection of Celtic Coins

The TCx3 collection consists of 118 Celtic coins that I have been fortunate enough to photograph and study. Each coin has been chosen because it interests me in some way. Sometimes on its own, but normally because it forms part of a bigger picture I’m trying to see.

My criteria for including a coin in the collection differs from many other collectors. While many only consider coins in the best conditions, I find that these hold little interest to me. Being “pretty” is not enough on its own. Instead, I find interest in the change of the images over time, the change of metals used, the change in the dies. I like buying duplicates to see how the dies degraded with use. I find interest in mistakes. I like offstruck coins that show the extremes of the image, or the uncut surfaces of the die itself. I like tong marks and double strikes, which may be the only distinguishable legacy that someone ever left behind in this world. I like a coin with a story.

None of the coins on this site are for sale. They’re not all in my possession anymore, and I’m keeping the few I have left. You can use my photos for non-commercial reasons as long as you 1) provide a link to this web site and 2) credit me with a “Photo Copyright tcx3.co.uk” message. If you want to use them for commercial reasons (that is, if you will make money from them directly or indirectly) then head over to www.alamy.com and search for “tcx3”.

You may wonder what TCx3 means. It means I was 20 years too late to get a good but short internet address. I’m obliged to tell you that if you follow one of my links to Amazon and then buy anything (and I mean anything) on Amazon, I may get an affiliates reward. That comes from their profit and it doesn’t cost you anything. If you find the site useful in anyway then I’d encourage you to do so. I made £1.50 in 2020 and I’m hoping that one year I can reach the heady heights of £2.

If you are looking for the privacy statement, I don’t have one. I don’t gather any private information about you, and to be honest, I wouldn’t know what to do with it if I did. I use Google Analytics on the site to see if anyone apart from me ever looks at this, so they will gather some information. There’s a GDPR option to say no to this when you first come to the site.