How did you become a collector of ancient coins?

I collected old US, and got bored pretty fast... moved into some foreign stuff, then met @Bing (which didn't go very well, cause' look what happened) and here I is.

 

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TIF,
great stories and great collection! This is my dream too, to create a such type web. Your photos of coins superb! And there are two beautiful coins from my main interest - EL trite and hekte with winged boar.

 

TIF has contributed much fun (and great coin images) for the hobby and CoinTalk.

I've got a couple flying pigs (pigasus) that I can show. Unfortunately details on the electrum boar were lost to antiquity. Maybe someone here can post a better example of the hekte.

 

Thank you, Ivan! Here are those two coins:


Lydian lion trite. I have done embarrassingly little research on these but look forward to reading Ivan's books. Joe Linzalone's Electrum and the Invention of Coinage is also in the queue.


Mytilene hekte. Because I am obsessed with Pigasus

I have only one other Greek electrum, a hekte with the obverse figure wearing a mask of Silenos atop his head. It's quite clear when you turn the coin ninety degrees counterclockwise. It's not a common coin but there have been a few very nice examples on the market lately. This is the worst example I've seen, but that made it much more affordable .


Phokaia hekte.

Thanks, @Collect89. I do like to play with my coins . I always appreciate your humorous posts too

 

I'll get one of those types ... when pigs fly!

 

I used to collect US coins as a kid, but then became more interested in collecting stamps as a teenager and young adult. I sold my US coins, in fact, to fund my stamp hobby.

I had a decent stamp collection and things had progressed to the point that the stamps I still needed for my collecting area became ever more difficult and pricey to obtain and I was getting discouraged and bored.

I was in theology school in the late 80s and there were a lot of brick and mortar stamp and coin stores in those days. There was one in particular that had a decent stock of ancient coins and its owner knew quite a bit about them. I always admired the ancient coins when I was in the store buying stamps.

I studied the ancient Greek language in theology school (to read the New Testament) and ancient history (for obvious reasons). I thought it would be fun to have some ancient coins and I bought my first one--this particular tribute penny:



And I followed this one with a Pontius Pilate bronze, and bronzes of others noted in the New Testament, such as Herod Agrippa and Antonius Felix.

By this time, I was hooked on ancient coins and set out to obtain Roman provincial coins from each of the cities Paul visited on his missionary journeys, which was difficult in the pre-internet days, especially as I wanted coins minted from about AD 10-55, which would have been in circulation in the cities that Paul lived and worked. Henry Lindgren at Antioch Associates was my "go-to" Roman provincial guy at the time.

But I then became interested in Roman coins in general and, of course, picked up a nice Greek or Byzantine here and there, and expanded my collection considerably. I'm particularly fond of the Antonine and Severan dynasties, but don't really limit my collecting to any one historical period.

 

I started collecting things at a very young age, not coins though. It wasn't until a few years ago I really got into coins. At first it was coins from the country I was from and USA, all modern. But even then my focus was on the uniqueness of a coin rather than completing a set, hence I focused on the toning of a coin.

From there I started deviating onto all fields of coin collecting. Modern from all countries, medieval and of course eventually ancients. All the (bad influences ) people here swayed me more towards ancients and so I started concentrating on ancients more than other eras.

I still collect modern coins though not as much as before, and I even got interested in medieval coins from Russia too.

 

My parents divorced in 1953. I spent a lot of time by myself for the next few years and developed an interest in coin collecting. My mother would loan me $50 (a lot of money in the 1950's) so I could buy a bag of cents from a vending machine company. I went through them and kept out the good ones while rolling the rest and turning in the rolls at the bank. They would not accept loose coins in quantity but I had a lot of free time. This method provided me with quite a few duplicate semi-key coins so I took my surplus to a coin shop to trade for things I had not found. I never could justify paying over face for a coin but I could accept trading a cent worth a dime for a different cent worth a dime. One day at a shop I saw a dish of ancients. Since they had no face value, I could allow myself to spent 50 cents on a coin using a few of my surplus coins to pay the bill. Before long I lost interest in looking for scarce dates but got a job so I could buy ancients. I sold all but three of these in 1974 (I have shown those three many times here). I never photographed most coins back then but made aluminum foil pressings of many. I really would love to find even one of my first collection coins again but have never seen one.

Below are a few. Who has my coins? The first was a 50 cent pick out. The others were not.

 

New or old however you want to look at it. But defiantly applies the term "foil art".

 

I was given my first ancient coin by my aunt when I was around 12 or so in the 1970s. It took me years to figure out that it was a real roman coin. When I went to university I used their excellent library to determine it was a bronze coin of Theodosius I, thus my user name. From there I branched out into Greek as I could afford books and coins. Now many years later it gives me great satisfaction to capture one of the coins I drooled over as a student.

John

 

I was a full time student and worked full time too, when I came into work one day I was not on the schedule and found out the business was going to close. I had a little saved and with the extra time on my hands I started up my interest in coins again, something I hadn't done since I was a child. I bought a large cent but was discouraged with how high the prices of coins became. That's when I stumbled upon ancients not knowing how many were out there.
I bought a lot of 300 'uncleaned' because they were cheap, unfortunately those had little or no detail which must have been someone's discards. I didn't let that discourage me and I found a better supply. That ended up being a very busy summer as I ended up purchasing 10 lots with a 1000 coins each. About 80% were LRB with the rest being anywhere within a 1000 years of each other. Some were throw aways, but overall the quality was decent with 2 or 3% being silver.
I remember coins were everywhere in the house I was renting a room in, I even converted the kitchen into a makeshift office. The owner and other tenants didn't seem to care as they never cooked anyway. I was amazed by the variation and history of those lots and was consumed with learning what I had. I made a lot of mistakes back then and surly gave away some way too cheap, but it was a great learning experience. I ended selling most of them individually or in small lots as my source of income until I got another job and have been collecting and selling ever since.

 

Dang it, now I have to get me a pigasus coin.

I got started pretty simply: I bought an ancient coin, liked it, bought another few. I'm up to like 7 ancients now -- nothing compared to what most of you have -- but I really enjoy them.

I still collect modern US coins, and I approach ancients in somewhat the same way: I look for well-centered, boldly struck coins with clear legends when available. These predilections have lead me to want to acquire as full a set of Antoninus Pius denarii as possible, since his coins are very available, and frequently come very nicely struck/etc.

I will probably never in my life put together a set of Morgan dollars except by accident, simply because I don't see the point of having 95 coins that mostly look alike except the date and mint mark (yes, I know, VAMs, but blah). I would much rather have the 200+ reverse types of Antoninus Pius than a Dansco album full of, well, anything (except a 7070 type set, lol)!

 

What is a VAM? What is a Dansco album? What is a 7070? Sorry, I have been out of Modern collecting for so long, I have no clue what those are, and I am not even interested in googling them. (By no means is this an insult @Paul M. , rather a statement of the Modern hobby being so "commoditized" since I last collected them years ago.)

 

I can thank you guys here on coin talk for my budding interest in ancients. I am still kind of "all over the place" in my collecting, and sometimes think I should specialize in a more narrow field of interest..........and then I realize that I really love the British and British Empire coins, as well as the big silver coins from all over the world, and the US classic coins from large cents to buffalo nickels to double eagles. Then there are the VOC coins, and all manner of old Dutch coins...I could go on and on.....I just love old coins, especially when they look like new. History in my hand.

The fellow who started this thread seems to have the soul of a poet.

 

I collected coins as a kid but sold them all of many years ago. When I was an undergrad I took many interesting courses and developed a love for history. I did my graduate work in other areas for a number of years and did not read many books of history. About 2 years ago I started looking at some ancient coins online. I became very interested in these little pieces of history and my interest in history long dormant began to wake once again. I read for several months about ancient coins-what to look for and what to avoid. I also re-read the classics like Suetonius and Livy. I looked at auction sites and fixed price lists and read many posts on different discussion boards. Then in April of 2015 I finally bought my first ancient coin (it is my avatar).

So, I have been at this for about 1 1/3 years and have enjoyed myself very much so far. At one point I had more than 35 ancient coins. I now have fewer than 30. I am trying to be very selective regarding the coins I acquire. Those that do not quite fit my focus will find other more appreciative homes.

 

I've told my story a few times but here it goes. I "casually" collected coins all my life, grabbing interesting things out of change and things, and I even bought a mint set or two as a kid. In college I saw a thread on reddit that mentioned that you could buy ancient coins online pretty cheap and I even considered buying a few from FORVM but I was broke and full time student as well as working almost full time as a supervisor at a campus kitchen and I was saving every bit of spare money I could because I knew I'd be unemployed and broke after the end of the school year, but the thought of owning a Roman coin stayed in the back of my mind.

Fast forward 2 years and I'd just moved to Colorado to chase a software development job at a tech company. Family was coming in to visit and I was showing them(and myself - I'd only been there a month!) around the state and we happened to wonder into a cool little coin and jewelry shop in Estes Park. They had a bunch of ancients, anywhere from $20 up to $2000, and I basically just bought the first two that I liked that were within my price range, small LRB and a small Byzantine bronze, and paid something like $65 total for them. Looking back I overpaid by a factor of 5 or 10 but it was worth it, as it got me interested in coins again, and in particular, ancient coins and ancient history.

I could say that was the end of it but actually, as much as I was interested in ancients, I was terrified of getting a fake after reading some things online. My local shops only had moderns(which I was more confident of buying at the time), so for 2 or 3 months I read every bit of information I could find about ancients, but I only collected moderns and very cheap uncleaned coins because in my mind I definitely wouldn't get a fake that way. During this time I think I read every single page on Doug Smith's and Warren Esty's website and read the new posts on FORVM every single day. Finally I decided to branch out and buy a cheap denarius and some small Greek silver fractionals on Vcoins. Then a few cheaper Greek and Byzantine bronzes from a guy who was a mentor of sorts for me.

The next phase of my "collecting career" started about 5 months after I bought those first two coins. I was fortunate enough to win a nice Gordian III sestertius in a contest, at the time the best and most beautiful coin I owned by far and when I held that coin it was like the floodgates opened. I spent the night reading about Gordian III and the historical context of the "Crisis of the Third Century" and reading various forum discussions around the coins of this era and that was the moment it really clicked for me. It was like I'd found religion, and modern coins became positively boring overnight. I started the slow process of selling off my modern coins the very next day. It took me a while because there was this nagging feeling in the back of my mind telling me that someday I'd regret it, but almost two years later I don't regret it at all.

The final(or at least, current) phase of my collecting career came 7 or so months later, after I'd been collecting for just over a year. I was researching a coin I'd bought and happened upon PDFs of Numismatica Ars Classica sales 61 and 63, the RBW collection. Reading the introductions from RBW and Roberto Russo, and then reading through the catalogs caused some sort of switch to flip in my head and even though I didn't know a lot about them, I decided I really wanted to focus on collecting Roman Republican coins and related provincial and imitative coins. I really can't explain it even today, I still find other coins interesting and very much enjoy reading the posts and seeing the coins shared by members here, but the coins in those catalogs and the history they represented spoke to me, so I decided to continue selling my moderns but to sell off all my unrelated ancients as well and put the money towards Roman Republic coins.

So there you go, how I started collecting and how I arrived at where I am today.

 

VAM: A name for die varieties of Morgan and Peace dollars, named after Leroy C. Van Allen and A. George Mallis, the authors of The Comprehensive Catalog and Encyclopedia of Morgan & Peace Dollars.

Dansco Album: A popular type of album made of cardboard with acetate slides so you can see both sides of the coin, like this:


7070: Model number for the Dansco US Type set album. It's currently not in production, and hasn't been for some time.

 

Ok, so, I have to slightly derail the thread for a second for my own selfish reasons... Is there a nice silver pigasus coin that's at least the size of a denarius and won't cost as much as a used Honda Civic?

 

There I was. Ebay, looking at coins. See a listing for 20 uncleaned Roman coins for $12.50.

I bit. Ended up geting 26. Maybe 15 were even close to recognizable. Cleaning them was an absolute chore. Turns out none were worth more than I paid.
However, I did trade one a Byzantine one of some kind for a buffet dinner at a UCLA dining hall valued at $12.50!

So I made my money back. But, I figured that I was too lazy to go through that again.
Plus, it's a pain trying to ID them, so I never bought another ancient coin again!

 

I don't think I could clean ancients - I don't have the patience or time. So I just get the already cleaned ones!