Is this already answered somewhere? My son is getting interested in US Coins and I thought for Christmas he might think like some really old coins. I know they can be gotten cheaply at coin shows ($0.25/ea or less?) Are there any things I should look for or stay away from? I guess Roman and Greek would be a place to start? Thanks.
The most affordable entry into ancients is Late Roman Bronze, particularly issues by emperors that had long reigns and churned out millions of coins, like Constantius II. You can find beautiful coins of common types for less than $20 apiece. Avoid the junk bins at shows unless you have the skills to cherrypick them. As with any collecting purchase, one nice coin is preferable to a handful of crap.
I agree with John Anthony. I am not much of a collector myself, but having written about a dozen feature articles for The Celator, I had to acquire or inspect quite a few coins. Also, I covered major conventions in the US and Europe for Coin World including the New York International Coin Fair which is mostly ancients. Also, as the editor and webmaster (and Board member) for the Michigan State Numismatic Society, my ancients colleagues included local notables Eldert Bontekoe of Pegasi, James Beach (Numiscellaneous), Fred Knust of First Light, and several other national dealers such as Lorraine Weiss who came in for the conventions each Thanksgiving Weekend. You get what you pay for. I once spent a morning with an eBay dealer who just received a bag of about 500 late Roman bronzes from the Middle East. Among the culls were several modern fakes. Use the same skills you have for US coins to get started in ancients. Differences in the materials and the markets can be significant, but at root coins are coins. You do not want to give your son a fake 1877 IHC or a modern Chinese Seated Dollar. US coins are clearly modeled on Greek and Roman originals. The US Mint coin cabinet always held them. Generally speaking, the cost ranges are the same for US and for ancients. Common ancients cost no more than common BU Morgan Dollars. And junk is junk. Collectors across the spectrum like to quote Aaron Feldman: "Buy the book before you buy the coin." Whitman, Fawcett/Krause, and other publishers have inexpensive but attractive and informative books about ancients. The Krause series by Wayne Sayles is a good start. Whitman just released a new 3rd edition of Money of the Bible by Kenneth Bressett.
Yes, the Red Book is a start for US coins. The prices are high of course, but it will list every US coin ever made. There is no such thing as red books for ancients. This is good and bad. The bad is there is no easy definitive guide to use. The good is there is no easy definitive guide to use because there is so, so much left to be discovered!
Well, yes, I get the point, but actually, handy standard guides do exist. The David Sear books - Greek Coins and their Values, Roman Coins and their Values, and Byzantine Coins and their Values - are taken largely from the huge British Museum Catalog and similar sylloges. Also the Red Book, while always close at hand here at my desk, is just a beginner's guide, really. Serious collectors own the specialty books. I have five books on Bust Halves - and I do not collect Bust Halves. The Cherrypicker's Guides are probably the best known for the US generalist who likes to look through a magnifier. Again, I get the point: a new Red Book every couple of years and you are good to go. Can't do that with ancients... Still and all, books of all kinds are always the foundation of serious collecting of anything, including books themselves.
I am with you. I have every BMC ancient coin publication, all DOC, RIC, all Sear, all Mitchiner, Von Aulock, Copenhagen, etc etc. I have quite a large library. My only point was every few years old coins are reattributed, new ones found etc. There is not, and can never be, a Redbook on ancient coins. I am ok with that.
I agree with the importance of reference books. But if there would be one thing which would smother a beginning interest in coins in my son, it would be to give him one of the well known numismatic standards. After two pages the verdict would be: BORING! My son (13) does have some ancient coins. But i chose to give him some coins of rulers even he had heard of and are exciting, and fairly easy to research. He has got a few Roman emperors, a Justin II Byzantine follis, a (posthumous) Alexander the Great drachm, some early Muslim Dirhams, a Mongol Jital and a Mughal Shah Jahan rupee among others. All these became very much more interesting after he looked up their history himself.
Well, if someone insists on being bored, there's not much you can do. I can't tell you how many times my kids have said, "THERE'S NOTHING TO DO!" when clearly there are a thousand things to do. If you take even the most common LRB's, the falling horseman types, you could spend your entire life studying the variations. Some collectors have done just that.
To me, this proves THCoins' premise. How many 13 year olds would find all the variations interesting. Even the most nerdy (studius) might find this too much. All in all, I agree with TH. The books can come later. Give the child something to stimulate their imagination (so lacking in these days and times).
Ancient coins might be cool. World coins of the last couple centuries might be more cool. Consider getting your son a copy of a Krause World coin catalog. I recently purchased the depicted 2013 catalog for $25 at a show. You can find last year's catalogs for even less than $25 each on Ebay. Consider getting a large batch of world coins for your son to sort. World coins are much easier to sort through than ancient coins. World coins teach us geography, politics, economics, World history, etc.
I would recommend a book Early World Coins & Early Weight Standards by Robert Tye. The book has a few Greek and Roman as well as Eastern, Indian, Chinese and Medieval coins concentrating on interesting types that played a role in the economy rather than rare rulers. There are no photos but hundreds of great line drawings and text that covers the world without the western bias we usually see. The book might suggest coins that you consider worthwhile. Types are coded H, M and L according to whether they are high, medium or low priced. http://www.coincoin.com/bkWG.htm half way down page - I note that the same book sells for $25 to over $400 depending on where you shop. Be sure to consider postage depending on where you live. Mr. Tye sells the book but he lives in the UK and has US dealers that sell the book cheaper because of postage. As a suggested coin, have you considered a Bagdad dirhem of Harun al Rashid, the sultan of the 1001 Nights story and a friend of Charlemagne (have your son research gifts they gave each other). They are not high priced but are hard to tell from other rulers of the general period unless you read a little Arabic. A coin of Charlemagne would be nice but he is expensive.
