Has anyone here used - http://numismatica-classica.lamoneta.it/moneta/R-G117/1 I have looked at pics of coins I want to buy on the site, but have not used it much (acsearch.info is too easy to use). I recently bought a coin with lots of control marks. I did not find many pics of what I wanted to see on my normal search sites. I found them ordered by control symbol number here. I noticed the site allows members to upload coin pics. Has anyone added pics to the site? I have a few RR coins that might fit in.
I've uploaded several of my rarer coins where the site only had a small number of photos or where my examples were better than the existing ones. In a few cases I went to upload coins and found that they already had photos from previous sales and collections. It's definitely a great photo catalog though and one that I use regularly in my own research.
I just received a post from the Moneta_L discussion group. Rasiel Suarez, author of the Encyclopedia of Roman Imperial Coins (ERIC), has launched a new database: http://www.coryssa.org . I checked it out briefly. It's not very pretty, but it has a lot of photos and information about sale prices. According to the announcement: "It now archives over two million coin records from auctions dating back to the 19th century and includes a number of tools enabling data analysis."
'Not Pretty' is putting it nicely but that is the price of unedited copying of sales by sellers who do not always know what they have. There are many photos, some better than others; there is much good information but it will have to be used with care. For example, I saw one seller who had quite a number of denarii of Julia Domna listed as Alexandria mint which were actually Rome mint. If you used this site to learn this distinction, you would be led astray but, if you want to see a lot of photos and practice critical thinking, this is a great resource.
It's an interesting site -- it's far from complete; I played around with it for many of my uncommonly-sold coins and couldn't find any of them. If you're looking for completeness, Wildwinds, OCRE, acsearchinfo, and The Coin Project are better. What IS valuable about the site is that it includes eBay listings, where most of the average examples of coins are sold and you get a much better idea of market values for less-than-stunning examples of common coins.
