I am researching a piece for The Coin Show and I was wondering what numismatic books you felt were indispensable? I am not much of a foreign, error, or Ancient collector. I don't know what would be comparable to the Red Book for ancient coins. Could you post your indispensable books? thanks in advance
For modern foreign, I would say KM is the indispensible volumes. For Byzantine, Sear's "Byzantine coins and their values". Roman is debatable, but for one book I would nominate the 1988 Sear "Roman coins and their values". Greek is much tougher, Sear has a two volume work but it was published in 1978. More detailed ancient "must haves" would be Sellwood for Parthian, Gobl for Sassanid, Hartill for Chinese cash, Barker for Vietnamese cash, etc. Not sure how detailed you wanted the list Mike. I could go on for hours. Chris P.S. Btw I will be visiting your wonderful home city next week. I am pretty excited.
Let me know when... maybe we can do lunch thanks for all the books. What is KM? The piece is on building a numismatic library. I wanted to list the top references for foreign and ancient collectors as well as the typical Redbook, Photograde, PCGS Guide, etc.
KM is Krause books, one for each century. "Standard Catalog of World Coins". For ancients, there is no red book unfortunately. Just way too many coin types to be covered in a single book. Heck, my BMC Greek set is like 27 volumes, (or 33, whatever), and even it does not cover every single Greek coin known. For ancients, you have the books from Sear that have some types listed and relative worth, beginner books on series to help you organize a collection like Sayles puts out, then what I term "professional" works. "Professional" being mainly books good dealers will have, but not as commonly collectors. Such books would be BMC Greek, SNG volumes like Copenhagen, ANS, Von Auloch, Dumbarton Oaks, etc. A middle category would be standard references for smaller series like Sellwood I mentioned, which are owned by dealers but usually by collectors of that series. Sorry its not easier, but for ancients you are talking over 1000 years, hundreds of issuing authorities, and 100's of thousands of different coins. Putting US coins in one book is child's play in comparison.
IMO there is much valuable information in this short thread. I have copied & condensed the ancient coin book list(s) contained in this thread. I plan to carry the list in my wallet so that I'll have a clue what to buy when I occasionally find used books for sale.
For ancient coins, there are several levels of literature. First, there are beginner guides, like the ones by Wayne Sayles, that give a general overview the series, but do not provide anything resembling a catalog. Intermediate books, like the Sear volumes or David Vagi's works for Roman coins, provide more detailed information and a basic, but often incomplete, catalog. Then there are detailed catalogs with a broad reach, like the Roman Imperial Coinage volumes. Beyond that, there are specialized works for specific areas, such as the coinage of a particular city in a particular metal or denomination. Finally, there are die studies, which show each individual die used to strike an issue - these can cover something as specific as a single mint's emission from a single year, or something as broad as the coinage of the Jewish revolt. Most series have at least a basic, beginner's guide and general catalog, but many lack anything more specific.
Most long time ancient collectors dislike this book but for beginners I happen to like "Encyclopedia of Roman Imperial Coins 2". Its available in book form and in e-book form. Info on it is at http://www.dirtyoldbooks.com/ Some may be turned off by how complicated RIC can be so they turn to the book mentioned above when starting out. The Sear books Chris mentioned is excellent too.
For Canadian coins the two volume Charlton Catalogues are indispensable. Volume One covers circulation issues and Volume Two covers NCLT. Toss in the Charlton Catalogues for Canadian tokens and paper money and you have just about covered everything Canadian.
If you ever are looking at books for certain types of coins, please just PM me or post a question. I love talking about coin books, ancient ones in particular. I just threw out a few off the top of my head. I have over 600 ancient coin books and am always buying more, if that shows the complexity of the subject. Btw Ardatirion put it more succinctly what I was trying to say. There are various levels of books depending on the users intent. Many collectors of Roman coins are fine with beginner/intermediate books, but others want the RIC volumes.
Mike some countries do have books comparable to the Red Book in the US. One of them is even red - Monnaies Francaises by Gadoury. He puts out a new one every year. A guy by the name of Johan Mevius used to publish a yearly Netherlands book called de nederlandse munten. I'm just not sure if he still publishes it it or not. I suspect that many countries have these kind of annual coin books, I just don't know what they are because I never collected modern world coins.
for british coins, the red book is "coins of england and the united kingdom" published annually by spink & son. most people just call it "spink" for short. it covers english/british coins from celtic minted b.c. to elizabeth ii.
This is an awesome post but could you translate the acronyms and shorthand names for me so that I can google these books?
Catalogue of Greek Coins in the British Museum. 29 Vols. London. 1873-1927. Sylloge Nummorum Graecorum, Danish National Museum. Copenhagen. 1942-1979. Sylloge Nummorum Graecorum, American Numismatic Society. New York. 1969-present. Sylloge Nummorum Graecorum, Sammlung Hans Von Aulock. Berlin. 1957-1968. A. Bellinger & P. Grierson. Catalogue of Byzantine Coins in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection and the Whittemore Collection. 5 Vols. Washington, D.C. 1966-73. D. Sellwood. An Introduction to the Coinage of Parthia. 2nd edition. London. 1980.
BMC Greek is Greek coins found in the British Museum collection. Sear means books by David Sear, one of the most respected ancient numismatists. His 1988 Roman coins and their values is the last one volume book on the subject. He is currently 4/5 of a 5 volume update, but its much more expensive, (for beginners). Sayles means introductory books "Ancient coin Collecting vol 1-5" by Wayne Sayles. Not a listing of types, and not very useful once a collector is experienced, but a fun start. SNG is basically museum or major collection holdings, and Copenhagen is excellent for Greek, Von Auloch excellent for Asia Minor, and ANS good all around. Dumbarton Oaks is the Byzantine coins in the Dumbarton Oaks museum, washington DC. Probably the definitive publication. 5 volumes, all around $200 or more. Books on specific series would include David Sellwood (2nd edition) Parthian Coins, Robert Gobl for Sassanian, Anne Vant haffe for Elymais, etc. Many series will have "intermediate" books for advanced collectors. Another suggestion I like for ancients is the "world of numismatics" series published in the 70's with the titles "Greek Coins", "Roman Coins" and "Byzantine coins". Nice "coffee table" books with nice coinage background that sometimes are found inexpensively on Ebay. I recommended Krause catalogs for world coins, but that is just the start. Every country has specialty books, and I highly recommend them if you start concentrating just on a certain country. KM is VERY generic, and there are literally tens of thousands of rarities not listed in their pages. If they did, one century would be more like 20 phone books rather than 1. Any other questions Mike just let me know. Chris
Oh, don't know how I could have not mentioned this, but RIC, (Roman Imperial Coinage), is THE professional reference for Roman imperials. 10 volumes. They are starting Roman Provincial Coinage but only 3 volumes out so far. The British Museum actually has many series published, but Greek is the most used. Also, for Roman Republican Crawford is the most used and authoritative. I believe "Roman Republican Coinage" by Crawford. See, I can talk about all of this stuff for days.
