I have some 200 coin books, and love them dearly. But I don't have enough shelves, so I can't picture them all so well as you can. I've got some general books to be able to look up most coins if necessary, plus a number of special books about Central Asian coins. And because a large part of Central Asia was part of Russia for a long time, and in the course of the 20th century it developed an excellent historic science tradition, there were many excellent Russian books published about early numismatics, often the only standard works of certain places in the world. And nowadays these are easy to use with the camera function of Google Translate, so I'm happy to collect these books. Here is an excellent book with a cross section of Uzbekistan coinage, a little book about Chaganiyan coinage of the early Middle Ages and the standard book (one of three volumes) about the Arabic inscriptions of Qarakhanid coins. Coins like these: (Chaganiyan Xusro I imitation with countermarks, about 600 AD) (AE fals Qarakhanids, 997 AD, Ferghana) Some more books: The left book, by Anokhin about coins from the Bosporus, only came in last Saturday. The middle one is one of my favorites, the Shagalov & Kuznetsov catalog of early medieval coins from Chach. It's bilingual, in Russian combined with charming English - with a clear Russian accent. And the right book is especially about the imitations of Roman denarii by 'Sarmatians' or whoever was responsible for coins like these: We had a (for me) very clarifying discussion on CoinTalk just last week, about these denarius imitations, where I used this book, Roman-Sarmatic denarii from the end of the 2nd to the middle of the 4th century AD by V.N. Kleshchinov, and translated the introduction from Russian into English (not perfect, but so that I understood what Kleshchinov wrote). So there: I love using coin books almost as much as playing with the coins themselves.
@Pellinore - I would love it if you would be willing to give a review of some of these books on medieval coins in my thread of book reviews. I admit to ignorance of a lot of the coins outside of Europe, and would love to have a wider variety represented (plus give me some ideas of books to pursue...)
I love seeing all the books. On @Voulgaroktonou 's top shelf in the second pic is a book hiding at far right which I highly recommend to all bibliomaniacs - numismatic bibliomaniacs or otherwise: My other books far outnumber my numismatically inclined shelves, but I've been working towards more than just a few shelves worth:
My copy of Sutherland's Roman Coins arrived yesterday, and I've added it to my bookshelves of ancient coins. For $13 including shipping, it's in pretty good condition -- the pages are all intact, and it has a complete book jacket that's only a little bit dirty. Interestingly, although the book was published in 1974 before Crawford's Roman Republican Coinage was published in that year, Sutherland's bibliography states that Crawford's book is "forthcoming," and he must have been familiar with its contents, because he adopts the same date as Crawford -- 212/211 BCE -- for the introduction of the denarius.
While I am not posting my library for reasons given above, I thought I would share what came in the mail recently: I took advantage of Spink’s lockdown special - buy 2 get one free. My intention was to get the North books and add the Slavic coins as the free book. But there was a bundle of the North books for a better price, so I said ‘screw it’ and got the bundle, the Slavic Coins, and Renovatio Monetae (which I wanted to read anyway). I knew North was a larger format book. I didn’t realize the other two would be so big
Those are some great additions Fitz. I look forward to hearing how you like the book on Slavic coins. I think you will really enjoy the Svensson book, it's one of my favorite ones in my library. My copies of North are really old, I might need to upgrade.
it might be a while... I decided to read through Sear’s Roman Coins... and then I have a few already in the queue. Some quick thoughts though - a little surprised that the catalogue section only features line drawings, but that may be useful considering how crude some of these are. I’m not sure it’s as thorough as say the Catalogue of bohemian, Hungary, and Polish coins, or the Galata book on Anglo-Gallic coins (just the ones off the top of my head...). But I can’t say for certain since I haven’t read it yet!
I'm in the same boat. I have a diaspora of books, numismatic and otherwise, scattered about the house. I dare say this will be the state of things when they carry me out feet first!
Although I quoted Dr. Einstein, I'm afraid I'm in the empty desk category. My desk/office is nearly always clean and neat. I've always been this way. I'm almost excessive/compulsive about it. I've even noticed that when I have a cup of coffee or other libationD), I move things around to certain positions - the same positions every time.
Well I got my first coin books, but with a twist! The first is the second edition of Harlan J. Berk's "100 Greatest Ancient Coins". Nothing unusual about that one and a great book with great pics. But as I have mentioned in another thread, one of my other hobbies is collecting old books. So I thought to kill 2 birds with one stone and find an antique book about coins! I got an 1887 first edition of Barclay V. Head's "Historia Numorum". Great book, in decent condition and it didn't cost much. First impressions are quite good, it seems well written and the images are plentiful even though they are smallish. It will take me a while to finish as it is rather big and as it is old, I will have to read it slowly and carefully... Can't really read this one in bed with one hand holding the book and eating nachos with the other!
Only essentially 3 books; Thompson, The NEW STYLE SILVER COINAGE of ATHENS vol. 1 & 2, ( now on line from the ANS), and Bauslaugh , Silver coins with the type of Aesillas the Quaestor. I don't see copies of any of these on peoples shelves. I've spent lots of money on photocopying literature on New Styles. To be fair I am a very lowly staff member of the University of Warwick which does numismatics as a part of it's classics materiel culture course, so has a goodish coin library, which is improved by them buying things I suggest. I also have access to JSTOR. Greek history books etc...only what I can get on kindle or through the university library.
I like old books, just like many of you guys This year I have come across some nice book lots in auction, many of them pictured here. The Sear books (RCV, GCV and GICV) are in another shelf, closer to the desktop, as they are the ones most frequently in use. «Byzantine Coins and their Values» is in the mail, on the way to complete the set. I was bidding on Prieur and Hendin the other day, but was outbid. I would like those too.
This is my only FSR purchase to date. The grail of reference books for Peloponnesian coins even though it's an auction catalogue.
A very impressive library! What do you think of Grueber? I recently ordered a very inexpensive on-demand reprint of Volume I, mostly out of curiosity, and am waiting for it to arrive. Even though it was published in 1911 and whatever dates the author ascribes to individual coins have long since been superseded, I thought that the discussions of coins might nonetheless be interesting in other respects. Also, I was thinking of buying a second-hand copy of the Dictionary of Greek Coin Inscriptions, but was wondering if it's useful for Roman Provincial coinage, or only for earlier Greek coins.
I haven’t spent a lot of time on any of them yet, really. The one I’ve looked at most is Grueber, but I find Crawford so much easier to use. I would like to learn Greek inscrptions better, so I think that book will be useful. Right now I feel like Grueber is more of a collectible than a book that I use, but perhaps it will be more interesting when I learn how to use it. I lack one volume, regrettably. But I’m glad the two others are there. I like the BMC books!
