Oh you ancient guys are tricky....

I suggest getting a card reader that will transfer your files. My cameras all used CF cards but you can get universal readers that will take a variety. USB 3.0 units are faster but 2.0 work well unless you have hundreds of images all at once. The model I use recently doubled in price so I might try a cheaper one but eBay has dozens. This will work unless your camera had built in memory rather than removable cards but I am not aware of any dSLR with that limitation. What do you have? There is no need to use any software that came with the camera if files were stored on cards in standard formats (JPG or TIF). My oldest dSLR is a Canon original Digital Rebel over a decade now and still going strong.

 

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Welcome
I knew this had to be out there somewhere!

Richard

 

This is a truly rare thing for a new collector to ask. In this day and age, not many bother with books and just buy the coins figuring everything is free on the internet. Some of the really old references are available as a free download from Google (but they are quite dated and a lot of them are over 100 years old). What one should get depends on what you are interested in and how much you want to learn. They will be more than your $4 coin!

@red_spork already mentioned a couple good ones. Any old version of Sear is good, but the numbering will be off, some dating and mint changes, etc, but all the previous versions are excellent beginning information.

Also, try the Ancient Coin Collecting series by Wayne Sayles. I think there are 7 volumes, about $20 each covering most aspects and cultures. Superb beginning books. You can probably still get them from Wayne himself. I wont give out his e-mail, but go to vcoins.com and look for his store and you can e-mail him directly.

Coinage and History of the Roman Empire by David Vagi is in two volumes, about $25 each. The work never took hold as most prefer the Sear books but they also contain a lot of great information and are informative and fun to read.

You might also check out The Roman Emperors, by Michael Grant. Not a coin book but he constantly refers to coins in his huge series of books on history. This is a good general biographical work of each emperor. You can get a copy on Amazon for a penny plus shipping! Why NOT buy it?!

There are many, many more, some general works, but I would not recommend you buy anything in depth until you specialize as those works can cost anywhere from $75 to many thousands.

 

TPS reports rear their ugly head once again!

 

@JeffsRealm when I wrote catalog I meant my personal records. With my ancient coin collection I've been meticulously recording every detail including price paid. Something I wish I would have done for my token collection.

 

Good point to bring up to a beginner. Record as much data as you can, even for the most plebeian of your coins. Provenance means much more now that it used to. Record any information, date, price paid, who and when and where you got it, retain the original tags if possible. It lends to the history of the coin.

 

Have you read Numismatic Forgery by Charles M. Larson? It is admittedly more focused on counterfeits of modern, die-struck coins, but covers methods that would work well on ancients as well.

 

I have not. I'll have to look it up.

 

Thank you very much, I did know about Doug's site from his posting here and have been looking through it. I didn't know about Warren Etsy's though thanks will look through it.

I purchased Sear's and Added Howego's to my wish list for later reading. Thanks for the suggestions.

Oh I have a card reader it is how I have to do it now. I can't remember off the top of my head what brand my camera is, but it is a pretty good one. The problem with it is something inside in the software broke a while ago so it only saves pictures to its internal memory. I then have to go through the camera interface which is kind of a pain and tell it to move the pictures to the memory card. Wait for that to happen. Then for some stupid reason they put the memory card slot behind the batteries. It does save as JPG though which is good.

So my steps,
I take the pictures.
Mess with the camera and I have to go through the pictures one at a time and move them to the memory card, there is no mass move or at least I never found one. I used to be able to just save to the memory card but that broke somewhere along the line.
Then I have to take all the batteries out, get the card out, put it in the computer, I do have a slot for the card built in to my laptop.
Transfer them off the card to my computer.
Reassemble camera. Also probably by now the batteries are dead as it uses 3 AAA batteries and the screen being on the whole time while transferring really runs down the juice.

It's doable, just a pain especially for one or two pictures, this is why I wait until it is pretty much full to transfer. The software used to be really easy, I had a cord that plugged in via USB and I could just open my camera like a USB drive. Copy all the pictures off and was done.

Thanks, these are some great references. I purchased a Sear's book from yours and @red_spork's recommendation. I also purchased the first Sayle's book and the Grant Book. Great places to start and will see how it goes before I order the others.

I wonder why more people do not buy books on this today. However, I guess I am pretty unusual as I still read a lot of books usually 3-4 a month. Some fiction, some non fiction, I just enjoy reading them. I have done so since I was young. I also have a small collection of older books. For example I love Dickens, so I have a complete collection of first editions from him. I should clarify American First editions, the British first editions are out of my price range. I am also a Stephen King and buy all his books in Hard Cover, most of them first editions. However the one I have never been able to get in First edition is the Gunslinger. Such a great book as it was his first but so few were ever printed, they rarely ever come up for sale and when they do, they are out of my price range.

 

Well, lets face it. Books are a thing of the past (or they are becoming that anyway). People now read their phones. I dont get it. I'm not yet 50 and I hate technology. For me a book has a feel, a smell, a familiarity. It has life. Anyway, I also have some great old books. I have quite a few first edition Edgar Rice Burroughs my mom bought when she was a kid (second hand then). many are 100 years old or so, so I try not to handle them too much.

 

I am a computer programmer for a living. I live very much in the world of tech all day long. So when I get home, I tend to leave it all behind. I used to when I was younger come home and plug right back in. I would still read books though, at least an hour a day. Nothing takes you away like a good book. There never seems to be a short supply either. However, as I got older, I am in my mid 40's now, I have really grown appreciation for more slower and finer things and things I did when I was younger. I always enjoyed camping when I was a kid, so a few years ago I started doing that again having not done that since early 20's. That's actually what I was doing up in mid Michigan this weekend when I bought my first ancient. I was out in the woods and needed to run to town to get some supplies and seen the coin shop open. Not having anything pressing to do being a few hundred miles from home why not stop in and kill some time.

 

Right there with ya! This past weekend I spent at my cabin in the mountains just a few miles from our local volcano. Sure, we have electricity, but no phones, no cel, no internet. And, during winter months, no water (as the pipes freeze) so we use the 75 year old outhouse. There isnt much better. BUT, I do bring books with me!

 

That you went camping and bought your first ancient is a pretty cool story! Well done sir!

 

Just 100 years ago. I still sleep a few miles away. Cant live your life thinking about what may be, right?

 

Before I bought to many coins I first of decided what origin (Roman) and then what date range (200 BC to 100 AD) then purchased a copy of Sears Roman coins and their values volume one, that covers early republican up to the last of the 12 caesars Domitian. But first off you have to initially decide the type and theme that interests you the most, if it is going to be Ancient Roman any age Sears had a good catalog that covers all, a bit dated now (1988) but will still give you a reasonable idea, here's a link https://www.vcoins.com/en/stores/an..._desc&countitems=74&changeDisplayList=&page=1

 

My ancient collection is very eclectic. I am big into military and religious themes...that's a lot of coins!

 

I seriously doubt this is a dSLR camera. I have little experience with the $10,000 ones from the last millennium but recent dSLR cameras need more juice than that. I would like to know the brand and model when you get a chance to check.

Books: I keep telling myself that I will add more to the page but never seem to. What reviews I have are here:
http://www.forumancientcoins.com/dougsmith/book.html

I particularly recommend the Vagi book reviewed on my page to those who are slab friendly. While the book does not cover the question the author is the one from NGC. Reading the book should make you feel better about his credentials.

 

@JeffsRealm, I second Ken's recommendation for the Wayne Sayles books. They're a great overview and will give you a good foundation.


http://wgs.cc/shop/index.php?route=product/product&path=74_75&product_id=143

There are six volumes in the series. See more at
http://wgs.cc/shop/index.php?route=product/category&path=74_75

 

Ummm, did somebody mention cool old first editions?

=> yah sorry, but I never get tired of showing-off the books that I've bought my sweet wife (she is an avid book reader)

1st edition of The Hobbit


Dickens => Nicholas Nickleby


1st edition of Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking Glass"



Early edition of Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"



... pretty fricken cool, eh? (man, that never gets old)

 

It is a fujifilm finepix hs 10.
Here is original listing on amazon. It takes 4 AA batteries, sorry forgot about the one down inside. It is kind of a hybrid as well as it has 17x optical zoom not digital. Let's me get great photos of wildlife from a distance. Take really good pictures, unfortunately it's old at 2010 camera. Oh and yeah it takes AA batteries it chews through them quickly.

https://www.amazon.com/Fujifilm-FinePix-Digital-Camera-Optical/dp/B0035WTVZA