Thirty pieces of silver

From Frozen Desire, by James Buchan:

The Gospels glitter with money, and it is possible, without great effort, to identify which coins Jesus had in mind on each occasion he spoke about money. Those coins, whether Roman, Greek, Phoenician, or Jewish, survive in one or two exemplars, for it's hard to destroy the precious metals. Some were accidentally lost or buried in hoards in times of trouble; others overstamped or welded into jewelry gifts for girls and women; or converted into other coins or cups or plate; so that the thirty Tyrian tetradrachms which were the price of Jesus' life have certainly come down the generations to us, if not in form at least in essence; and somewhere, in some museum or collector's cabinet or dealer's stock, dispersed in a necklace or cufflinks, still blaze with their ancient deicide.

Tyrian tetradrachm