Coin earrings are beautiful items of jewelry made from ancient coins. Wearing coin earrings made from, say, ancient prutot, gives the wearer the sense of carrying a meaningful piece of ancient history with her.

Coin earrings may be made with the ancient lepton coins, which were tiny bronze coins first minted during the time of King Alexander Jannaeus, who ruled from 103-76 BCE. They are known by Christians as widow’s mites, because the King James translation of the Gospel of Mark refers to them as such in Jesus’ teaching in the temple about wealth. Mites were the coins given by the impoverished widow, representing the entirety of her wealth. Lepta make beautiful coin earrings because of their small size and because of the beauty and uniqueness of each individual coin.

The prutah was a slightly larger coin from the same era. One prutah was equivalent to two lepta. These, too were made of bronze and can be made into beautiful and historically and religiously meaningful coin earrings.

Sometimes the prutah is referred to as the Coin of Masada, because a cache of prutot was found in an archaeological exploration of Masada. Coin earrings made with the Coins of Masada are treasured by Jewish people everywhere due to the overwhelming historical importance of Masada, where more than 900 Jews chose death rather than be captured and enslaved or killed by the Romans in the year 73. That this happened a mere three years after the destruction of the Second Temple gives these coin earrings even more meaning.

Herod Agrippa coins are also made into coin jewelry, including coin earrings. Agrippa, who ruled from 37-44 CE, was the grandson of Herod the Great. Coin earrings made with Herod Agrippa coins are important to both Jews and Christians. It was Herod Agrippa that imprisoned Peter, as recounted in the New Testament Book of Acts, and who had James, the brother of the disciple John and disciple of Jesus, executed.

Ancient shekels can be made into coin earrings. These silver shekels, which were issued in the Phonecian port city of Tyre, were issued consistently from 126 BCE to the around 69-70 CE, the time of the First Jewish War, and were the only coins the Temple in Jerusalem accepted as payment of the annual tax. They were known for their accurate weight and good silver content. These can be made into stunning coin earrings.