My First Physical Ancient Coin Book!

While I keep a good record of my ancient coin acquisitions I never did so with my books until last week. I was a bit surprised I have about 30. This book started it all for me. I read the book and it lit a happily enduring fire.
Also, I've been thinking about a new collecting line - Roman Empress sestertii. My thanks to @dougsmit for his photo of the book Women of the Caesars: Their Lives and Portraits on Coins to use as a reference to start this journey. At $100 on Amazon or Ebay I'll have to wait for another gubmit check.

 

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And here are some of my books, again from the 1970th:

 

Ooh! Thanks for posting this @furryfrog02 ! I need to get a copy of this book!

 

I bought my first coin books of any kind in the mid-1960s, starting when I was about 9 or 10, but didn't buy my first book exclusively about ancient coins until the mid-80s, about 20 years later. The very first coin book I owned was the 1965 4th edition of Ken Bressett's Guide Book of English Coins, which my father bought for me in a shop in the Bahamas called "Coin of the Realm" when I was a young child and we were there on vacation; I had expressed fascination with the circulating English coinage. And there was this book, published in 1964, which my parents bought for me about a year later. It had a few pages about ancient coins; I'm attaching part of one of them:





$1.50? $3? If only I could go back! I do remember looking at these drawings with interest as a child. They seemed magical to me.

Then in 1967 I bought this one, which had an interesting chapter of about 30 pp. on ancient coins:



But this was my first actual ancient coin book, published in 1981 (the previous [3rd] edition to the 1988 edition posted by @Roman Collector above). I bought it around 1985 because I always liked Roman coins, even though I bought them only sporadically over the next 30 years:



I found these penciled notes of mine on one of the endpapers. The top part, written on March 1, 1986 shortly after I bought the book, lists the rather wretched coins (mostly AE4s) I had bought when I was 8 or 9 at a local shop, at a price of 3 or 4 to the dollar. but had kept since then. Plus a Domitian and a Trajan Decius I bought at coin shows in the early 1980s (together with my Ti. Veturius Republican denarius which I bought the same day as the Trajan Decius but didn't write down for some reason.) The prices I wrote down, from the book, were way too optimistic given the condition of the coins with prices -- as I said, wretched, except for the Domitian. The bottom part lists the Domitian again, plus the handful of additional coins I bought during the next 20 years or so, from 1986 to the mid-2000s. (I got married in 1987 and my son was born in 1990, which, along with work and getting divorced, didn't leave a whole lot of time for the next 20 or 25 years to think about ancient coins in addition to my primary collecting interests back then, namely antiquities and British coins and historical medals.)

 

I think I saw your video on Reddit??

 

Ha yeah that would be my video! Shared on Facebook too. Will probably end up posting again lol, just so excited about it. I have a "pedigree collection" within my collection (both coin & book) & this is now among my favorites. I've used the book for years and often admired the cover coin, so I couldn't believe my luck when it came up for auction (and stayed surprisingly affordable!)

 

Oh what a small community we have.

what’s the book like? I sometimes use the ERIC on forumancientcoins for quick price and availability reference on the more uncommon usurpers/wives/mistresses/etc. Don’t mind my ignorance it are they simulate? I’ve now added the book to my infinite wish list.

 

I'm already married and have 3 kids. It's too late for me haha

 

This is great, my wife agreed with that one even though we have two kids and don’t have cats.

 

Here is another very interesting book that I purchased second hand from a local library book sale. It doesn’t have a lot of detail on varieties or specific types but it does go through each country/region on the planet and expands on their history of minting coins from ancient to modern. It has a lot of interesting information and perfect for a newish collector trying to understand the location of ancient mints as they relate to their modern counterpart.

 

LOL

 

My first ancient coin book was purchased June 1, 1978 from Tom McKenna, His business name was "Roman Coins and Books About Them"

The same day, I bought my first ancient coin (from Tom):

Prior to that, my first coin book was purchased in 1961:

 

I find the book tremendously useful for attributing/identifying Roman Imperial & Byzantine coins. As far as I know, it's the only attempt at a comprehensive single- volume catalog covering all Roman Imperials (including Byzantine). That's every catalog number (I believe) in the 10 volume (13 parts) RIC, or Roman Imperial Coinage, and Henri Cohen's 8-volume reference from the late 19th century, and scattered coins "not in RIC." Plus Byzantine coins from the 5-volume Dumbarton Oaks series and the single-volume Sear Byzantine Coins and Their Values.

So it's really a reference/cataloging volume that you "use," not a book you sit down and read. When I'm actively identifying / researching Roman/Byz coins, there have been plenty of periods when I used my copy daily-to-weekly over the past 10 years.

 

Whitting is a very good start, was one of my early purchases as a new Byz collector. The follis is also a good get. Have fun. You might want to check out
Wayne Sales' book on Byz coins as well. Happy hunting for that one.

 

It occurred to me that I got my first small book -- really, a booklet -- that referred to ancient coins even earlier than the ones I mentioned above. Does anyone remember the Chase Manhattan Bank Money Museum in Rockefeller Center, which operated from about 1928-1977? Here's an old postcard showing one of the display cases:



In 1962, Chase published a little book about the Money Museum, and my father took me there that year (I was 7) because he thought I'd enjoy it and to get a copy of the booklet for me. I was fascinated by the place, which I recall looking pretty much like that postcard -- display cases all around the walls. I took a long time to look at everything. At least, to about halfway up the wall!

Anyway, here are the covers and title page of the booklet, which I found this evening, inside the pages of an actual book about the history of money published by the British Museum, that I bought a couple of decades later:





Note the Athenian owl and the Lysimachos:



And here's one of their crown jewels, pictured on the inside of the back cover, a decadrachm in fantastic condition:



According to Wikipedia, when the Money Museum closed in 1977 -- which was a shame -- "most of the collection (approx. 26,000 objects) [I don't know how to reconcile that number with the 75,000 stated on my booklet's title page] was donated to the National Numismatic Collection at the Smithsonian Institution on 16 January 1978. Some of the collection went to the American Numismatic Society, including an 1804 U.S. dollar." So I'm not sure where the decadrachm and other ancient coins in the collection are now. Hopefully they're being well cared-for.

 

It's very useful; my only problem is that it's way too big and heavy for me to hold comfortably. No bedtime reading with that one!

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chase_Manhattan_Bank_Money_Museum

 

Richard Plant just died. A remarkable scholar with a popular touch and apparently an exceptionally nice man. He was a Methodist minister. I corresponded with him a number of times but unfortunately never met him. Some of his British and ancient coins were on sale this week at the DNW auction in London.