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Coins

Every milestone is a real ancient coin.

Twenty-eight famous coins of Greece and Rome, one for each step you take away from your phone. A Roman bronze as for your first block. The gold EID MAR aureus of Brutus — one of three known — for 1,000 days in a row.

Download on the App StoreSee all 28
Circuit Home: a silver Pegasus stater on a plinth, with All coins · 3 of 28 below it

Why coins

Money is the oldest record of what people valued.

A city put its goddess, its owl or its sea turtle on its coins. A king put his own face there. Brutus put two daggers and a date. Each coin is a small, hard, true statement of what mattered to the people who made it — and every one here has lasted at least seventeen centuries.

A milestone should be worth that much. So instead of a badge, every step you take away from your phone earns one of the most famous coins ever struck — with its story, where to see one, and a line on why it fits.

Real, famous coins

Athens's owl, Caesar's elephant, the Colosseum on a sestertius of Titus, Brutus's EID MAR. Every one is a real type you can see in a museum today.

Earned, not collected at random

No loot boxes, no odds. Each coin has one milestone, and the app tells you exactly what it is and how close you are.

A story on the back

An earned coin opens its story, a few things you didn't know, a notable auction sale, the museums that hold one, and both faces with their legends translated.

Checked, not embellished

Dates, prices and museums come from museum records, numismatic references and auction-house lot pages. Where a fact can't be sourced, it isn't there.

How the ladder works

The rarer the coin, the harder the step.

Everything is counted on the phone: blocks you finish, days in a row, hours blocked, schedules kept, and the times the shield stopped you. No account, no server, no leaderboard.

Getting started

Finish your first block. Then let a schedule run from start to finish without ending it early.

Days in a row

Finish a block every day. Twelve coins, from 3 days to 1,000.

Hours blocked

Every blocked hour counts toward the next. Eleven coins, from a day to 10,000 hours.

Held the line

Five blocks where the shield stopped you and nothing got through. A Strict block put to the test that held to the end.

Circuit Pro

One coin for going Pro: Julius Caesar's elephant denarius.

Four of the stories

Every coin comes with its story. Here are four.

Athenian owl tetradrachm, obverse: Head of Athena right in a crested Attic helmet decorated with olive leaves
Obverse
Athenian owl tetradrachm, reverse: Owl standing right, head facing; an olive sprig and a small crescent moon behind; ΑΘΕ
ReverseΑΘΕ“Athe…”: the first letters of Athens, marking the coin as Athenian

No. 2 · A schedule kept to the end

An owl so trusted it barely changed for two centuries — and it is still on Greece's €1 coin.

Athenian owl tetradrachm · Classical Athens · c. 454–404 BC · Probably tens of millions made

Athenians called these coins glaukes, “owls”. From the first tetradrachms around 515 BC the design barely changed for about two centuries, so owls were recognised far beyond Greece: hoards have turned up in Egypt, the Levant and the eastern Persian Empire.

Did you know

  • In Aristophanes' Birds the chorus promises the judges that the “owls of Laurion” will never run short: they will nest in their purses and hatch small change.
  • You may have one in your pocket: Greece's €1 coin reproduces the owl from the ancient Athenian four-drachma piece.

At auction

An extremely fine owl with its full helmet crest sold for $4,500 at CNG in September 2026, three times its estimate; a more typical one in the same grade made $1,300 there in 2024 (hammer prices, without the buyer's fee).

Where to see one: British Museum, London · Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Athens kept its owl almost unchanged for two hundred years, and that sameness helped strangers trust it.
Gold croeseid of Croesus, obverse: Foreparts of a lion (left) and a bull (right) facing each other
Obverse
Gold croeseid of Croesus, reverse: Two square incuse punches
Reverse

No. 16 · 100 days in a row

The proverbially rich king swapped a murky mix for pure gold.

Gold croeseid of Croesus · Kingdom of Lydia · c. 561–546 BC · Rarer than the light croeseid

Croesus, the proverbially rich king of Lydia, called in the old electrum coins — a natural mix of gold and silver — and replaced them with coins of pure gold and pure silver. His first gold staters weighed about 10.8 g, probably so that one could be swapped for one old electrum stater; soon the standard was cut to 8.1 g.

Did you know

  • When the Persian king Cyrus took Sardis in the mid-540s BC, he did not scrap Croesus's design: the Persians went on minting the lion-and-bull coins.
  • In 1922 American excavators at Sardis found a hoard of 30 gold croeseids that had been buried in a clay jar; four of the coins and the jar are now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

At auction

A heavy gold croeseid of 10.77 g sold for $192,000 at Heritage Auctions in May 2023 — reported as a record for a heavy Croesus stater.

Where to see one: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York · Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven · Istanbul Archaeology Museums, Istanbul

Croesus swapped a murky mix for pure gold and pure silver: you spend wisely only what you can see clearly — your time included.
Colosseum sestertius of Titus, obverse: Titus in a toga, seated left on a magistrate's curule chair among heaped arms, holding a branch; S C in the field
ObverseIMP T CAES VESP AVG P M TR P P P COS VIII · S CEmperor Titus Caesar Vespasian Augustus, chief priest, holder of tribunician power, father of the fatherland, consul for the eighth time · by decree of the Senate
Colosseum sestertius of Titus, reverse: The Flavian Amphitheatre — the Colosseum — seen from above, its tiers packed with spectators; the Meta Sudans fountain on the left, a two-storey building (perhaps the Baths of Titus) on the right
Reverse

No. 24 · 5,000 hours blocked

The Colosseum, seen from above, on a coin of AD 80–81.

Colosseum sestertius of Titus · Imperial Rome · AD 80–81 · Colosseum on coins: only 3 times

Vespasian began the great amphitheatre in AD 71, and his son Titus dedicated the finished building in June 80 with games that lasted a hundred days. This sestertius, struck in Rome in 80–81, shows it from above in astonishing detail — crowds on the tiers, stairways, even what may be the emperor's box.

Did you know

  • The Colosseum appears on Roman coinage only three times: on these sestertii of Titus, on coins of Severus Alexander and on medallions of Gordian III.
  • This same coin had sold in London in 2017 for £372,000 with premium — against an estimate of £60,000–80,000 — and three years later made CHF 425,000 at the hammer in Zurich.

At auction

Hammer price CHF 425,000 at Numismatica Ars Classica, Zurich, on 6–7 October 2020 (Auction 120, lot 735; buyer's premium extra). It is the posthumous 'Divus Titus' variant of the type.

Where to see one: Münzkabinett, Bode-Museum, Berlin · British Museum, London

Rome built the Colosseum over about ten years, level by level; the biggest things are finished one tier at a time.
Gold EID MAR aureus of Brutus, obverse: Bare head of Marcus Junius Brutus right (illustration)
ObverseIllustrationBRVT IMP · L PLAET CESTBrutus, victorious general · Lucius Plaetorius Cestianus (the officer in charge of the coinage)
Gold EID MAR aureus of Brutus, reverse: A cap of liberty (pileus) between two daggers of different design, points down (illustration)
ReverseIllustrationEID MARon the Ides of March (15 March)

No. 28 · 1,000 days in a row

A record £3.24 million — then Manhattan prosecutors sent it to Greece.

Gold EID MAR aureus of Brutus · Late Roman Republic · 42 BC · Three known in gold

Alongside the silver denarius, Brutus struck a few EID MAR coins in gold in 42 BC, perhaps as gifts for his commanders before Philippi; only three are known. One, in near-mint condition, sold in London in October 2020 for a record £3.24 million with premium — then Manhattan prosecutors found its provenance had been falsified. They seized it in February 2023 and returned it to Greece on 21 March 2023.

Did you know

  • Another of the three was offered to the British Museum in 1932, but the Depression left it unable to buy. It was later shown there on loan from 2010 to 2021 — while the gold EID MAR the museum had owned since 1825, a gift of King George IV, turned out to be a forgery.
  • The gold coin in the 2020 sale came with a pedigree from an old Swiss collection; prosecutors said it had in fact surfaced in Munich in 2016 with no provenance and was smuggled into London, and that Roma's owner Richard Beale had admitted paying for the provenance.

At auction

Hammer price £2,700,000 — £3,240,000 with buyer's premium, about $4.19 million — at Roma Numismatics, London, on 29 October 2020 (Auction XX, lot 463): at the time the highest price ever paid for an ancient coin at auction.

Where to see one: Money Museum of the Deutsche Bundesbank, Frankfurt am Main

Brutus won the moment and lost the war: the Ides of March took one day, but freedom needed a plan for the years after.

In the app

Your coin on Home. The whole gallery a tap away.

The coin you choose stands on Home; tap “All coins” to open the gallery and swipe through all 28. Each one shows what earns it, a true line about its rarity, and how close you are. Stats shows the same coins.

  • ✓Turn it over — an earned coin flips to show its other face.
  • ✓Show on Home — put any coin you have earned on the plinth.
  • ✓Its story — its history in a few sentences, “Did you know” facts and “Why this coin”.
  • ✓At auction — a notable sale, with the house, the city and the date.
  • ✓Where to see one — the museums that hold the type.
  • ✓Both faces — what each side shows, with its legend translated.
An earned coin's card for the Colosseum sestertius of Titus: the coin, its story, three Did you know facts and its auction result

Real coins, every fact checked

Photographs of real specimens. Facts with a source behind them.

Every coin is a real, famous type. Every date, sale price and museum on its card was checked against museum records, numismatic references and auction-house lot pages — and a claim that could not be sourced was left out.

Photographs from museum open collections: Art Institute of Chicago (CC0), Cleveland Museum of Art (CC0), Münzkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (Public Domain Mark), The Met (CC0) and Yale University Art Gallery (CC0).

Where no free photograph of a coin exists, its face is an illustration drawn from public-domain photographs of related coins, and it is labelled “illustration” wherever it appears: Roman bronze as: Janus and the prow (obverse); Sestertius of Nero with the harbour of Ostia (both faces); Gold 20-stater of Eucratides I (the Eukratideion) (both faces); Gold EID MAR aureus of Brutus (both faces).

Credits, coin by coin
  1. 01 Roman bronze as: Janus and the prow — obverse: illustration; reverse: Art Institute of Chicago, CC0
  2. 02 Athenian owl tetradrachm — obverse: Cleveland Museum of Art, CC0; reverse: Cleveland Museum of Art, CC0
  3. 03 Aegina sea-turtle stater — obverse: Yale University Art Gallery, CC0; reverse: Yale University Art Gallery, CC0
  4. 04 Pegasus stater (a “colt”) — obverse: Cleveland Museum of Art, CC0; reverse: Cleveland Museum of Art, CC0
  5. 05 The first denarius: Roma and the Dioscuri — obverse: Yale University Art Gallery, CC0; reverse: Yale University Art Gallery, CC0
  6. 06 Tetradrachm of Alexander the Great — obverse: Yale University Art Gallery, CC0; reverse: Yale University Art Gallery, CC0
  7. 07 The “tribute penny” of Tiberius — obverse: Yale University Art Gallery, CC0; reverse: Yale University Art Gallery, CC0
  8. 08 Incuse stater of Metapontum with ear of barley — obverse: Yale University Art Gallery, CC0; reverse: Yale University Art Gallery, CC0
  9. 09 Lydian electrum trite with lion head — obverse: Yale University Art Gallery, CC0; reverse: Yale University Art Gallery, CC0
  10. 10 Gold solidus of Constantine the Great — obverse: Yale University Art Gallery, CC0; reverse: Yale University Art Gallery, CC0
  11. 11 Denarius of Augustus with Capricorn — obverse: Yale University Art Gallery, CC0; reverse: Yale University Art Gallery, CC0
  12. 12 Sestertius of Nero with the harbour of Ostia — obverse: illustration; reverse: illustration
  13. 13 Julius Caesar's “elephant” denarius — obverse: Yale University Art Gallery, CC0; reverse: Yale University Art Gallery, CC0
  14. 14 Gold stater of Philip II of Macedon — obverse: Yale University Art Gallery, CC0; reverse: Yale University Art Gallery, CC0
  15. 15 IVDAEA CAPTA sestertius of Vespasian — obverse: Yale University Art Gallery, CC0; reverse: Yale University Art Gallery, CC0
  16. 16 Gold croeseid of Croesus — obverse: Yale University Art Gallery, CC0; reverse: Yale University Art Gallery, CC0
  17. 17 Denarius of Mark Antony and Cleopatra — obverse: Yale University Art Gallery, CC0; reverse: Yale University Art Gallery, CC0
  18. 18 Tetradrachm of Lysimachus — obverse: Yale University Art Gallery, CC0; reverse: Yale University Art Gallery, CC0
  19. 19 Kimon's facing Arethusa tetradrachm — obverse: Münzkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Public Domain Mark; reverse: Münzkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Public Domain Mark
  20. 20 Tetradrachm of Mithridates VI with Pegasus — obverse: Yale University Art Gallery, CC0; reverse: Yale University Art Gallery, CC0
  21. 21 Naxos tetradrachm with Silenos — obverse: Münzkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Public Domain Mark; reverse: Münzkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Public Domain Mark
  22. 22 Syracusan decadrachm signed by Euainetos — obverse: The Met, CC0; reverse: The Met, CC0
  23. 23 Athenian decadrachm — obverse: Münzkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Public Domain Mark; reverse: Münzkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Public Domain Mark
  24. 24 Colosseum sestertius of Titus — obverse: Münzkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Public Domain Mark; reverse: Münzkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Public Domain Mark
  25. 25 EID MAR denarius of Brutus — obverse: The Met, CC0; reverse: The Met, CC0
  26. 26 Gold 20-stater of Eucratides I (the Eukratideion) — obverse: illustration; reverse: illustration
  27. 27 The Demareteion decadrachm — obverse: Münzkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Public Domain Mark; reverse: Münzkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Public Domain Mark
  28. 28 Gold EID MAR aureus of Brutus — obverse: illustration; reverse: illustration

Your first coin is one block away.

Download on the App Store