i want to know about the american coins and ancient market . if i want to learn how to trade in this market , there any book that techs about this, or do you know any other way to study it? thanks.
For US coins, you would probably want to get a copy of the Red Book of United States Coins published by Whitman. This will give you an overview of every type of coin that has ever been used for commerce going back to colonial days. For more detailed information about a specific type/denomination like the Morgan dollar or Kennedy half dollar, just to name a couple, you will probably need other books. Whitman Publishing does have a fairly extensive library of numismatic books available for sale, so you might want to browse their website. I think they also have books on ancient coinage, but since I don't collect these, I can't say how detailed they may or may not be. Chris
There is no one book on ancients. The closest thing I could recommend to you would be David Sears books. He did a Greek coins and their Values in the late 70's in two parts. Greek Imperial coins.. in 1982, Byzantine Coins... 1987, and the last roman Coins and their Values was 1988. He currently has 4 of 5 new Roman coins and their values out. The prices will be relative to each other, not current of course. This is as close as there is besides scanning Ebay and auction catalogs to try to get a feel of the market. Btw, I would not really recommend Whitman books on ancients. A couple are fun reads, that is it. Ancient coin literature is its own field, much more so than American literature. This is because the coin types are greater by 100,000. Having so few coin types is the reason US collectors collect by date, mintmark, and even by die, due to the lack of true diversity in the field. Its not unfair, US coinage has only been around 220 years, ancients made coins for 2000 years and hundreds of civilizations.
Thanks for mentioning this. Since I don't collect Ancients, now I will know not to recommend Whitman for technical data. Chris
Like any other field of study there really is only one way to do it, that's to completely immerse yourself into it and study it. But I'll be honest, nobody knows it all because there is just too much to know. That' why dealers and collectors alike tend to specialize. You could spend years just trying to learn about the market for Lincoln cents. For instance, somebody that knows the market for Lincoln cents can have a person walk up to them with say 100 Lincoln cents. You would first have to be able to say with reasonable certainty that all of the coins were authentic and problem free. And you should be able to look at all of those coins and be able to grade them, accurately. You would have to be able to identify the various major varieties for each date/mint. You would also have to know the current value for each in their own respective grades. And know all of this off the top of your head. A person who knows the market could do this, all of it, in about 10 minutes. That's what knowing the market means to me. Now that said, I don't know of more than say a double handful of people in the world who could do it. So what does knowing the market mean to you ?
first thanks to all of you for your good answer. i gonna take course,and i found some good books about how to give price for ancient things. like this:http://www.amazon.com/Millers-Understanding-Antiques-Martin-Miller/dp/1857328574 and this:http://www.amazon.com/dp/184533440X?tag=fw-source-other-20 if you know a good book in this stuff is will be nice if you can tell the name . again thanks to all of you.
