I have two ancient coins, both City commemoratives, both I have a difficulty identifying mint marks First one, my best guess is SHTSA, but I'm not sure And the other, something and then BP Help!
@CoinBlazer , you need to start becoming familiar with catalogs, legends on coins, and how to read both the legends and catalogs. Ancient coins is research intensive. You are no longer in the home of the slabbed wonders.
This website should be a constant companion. I have physical catalog books for many areas, but I can't afford nor want to own every catalog there is, so this website is a God sent. http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/
What physical catalogs are important to own? I prefer paper over screen anyway so I wouldn't mind having a few catalogs.
Depends on what you collect. The bulk of my collection (roughly 60%) are Roman silver coins, so I have all the volumes for "Roman Silver Coins". I'm sure others can recommend catalogs for primarily bronze coins, Greek coins, Asian coins, or whatever area you end up focusing on the most.
With your first coin, you are correct that it looks like "SH . . .", but your first thought should have been "SM . . ." because many eastern mints begin their mint marks with those letters. SM stands for Sacra Moneta (forgive me if I've mangled the Latin), which means that the value of the coin is guaranteed by the state. So whenever you see SM at the beginning of a mint mark, look to the third letter to identify the city. Here are two sites that list different mint marks: https://www.forumancientcoins.com/numiswiki/view.asp?key=Mint Marks http://www.romancoins.info/Mintmarks.html Neither site lists every known variation of officina and control marks--there are thousands of them--but these lists should help you narrow down the city.
