My very first ancient

I have been collecting US coins going on 37 years now. I’ve been on this forum for going on 16 of those years. I enjoy reading posts on this side of the wall and like looking at all the coins posted here. The knowledge I see in here is both impressive and intimidating. I don’t know how far I’ll step into this new land. I wanted to add an ancient to my collection and tasked my LCS guys with finding me a nice one of the type posted here. They did just that last week at Central States:

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

Beautiful owl!
Welcome to the Dark Side.
I bet you can't get just one

 

Nice pickup, Shawn. A good start into the ancients. I myself also started with an Athenian owl. My second is an Alexander III tetradrachm.

 

Nice hooter!

 

Great first ancient.

My first one is below:


Septimius Severus (193 - 211 A.D)
AR Denarius
O: SEVERVS AVG PART MAX, Laureate head right.
R:RESTITVTOR VRBIS (Restoration of the City), Severus in military attire, spear in left, sacrificing over a tripod altar with right.
Rome mint, 201 A.D.
3.3g
18mm
RIC 167a, RSC 599, BMCRE 202

 

OMGOMGOMG...nice choice!!!

 

What a way to start! Congrats, that is a beauty!

 

If I indeed am going to walk into this land, it appears I may follow you as I’d love to make something from Alexander the Great’s realm my second piece as well!

 

Two iconic coins, my opinion, Alexander Tet and Athena Owl.

 

Great start, congrats.

 

Nice coin! Definitely my favorite ancient coin design. What is the approximate cost for those? I have only ever bought one ancient coin, even so, it was a gift for my brother...

 

That was exactly how I started this ancient coin adventure! I had a lot of fun searching for the obverse profiles that I enjoyed looking at. I almost started collecting the owls, but Rome called.

 

Very nice...one that is on my too do list.

 

Better first coin than mine!

 

...wow...now that's a hard act to follow...great coin!

 

Beautiful owl! It is hard to resist acquiring at least one of these iconic ancient coins, to be sure!

As a collector of US coins, I am sure that you see connections in some of the designs and themes that appear on them with those on ancient coins. I see collecting ancients as an extension of the US coins that I began collecting back the early 80s. Over the intervening period I moved to world coins to now almost totally ancients. It's all part of the journey that all of us take.

Take, for example the magnificent $50 Panama-Pacific octagonal coin of 1915 (not mine!):


Photo Courtesy of PCGS

Here we have Minerva (Athena) on the obverse and an owl on the reverse, very much like your owl.

And what about the dolphins surrounding Minerva and the owl? They can be found on coins of Syracuse, as on this tetradrachm of the Deinomenid Tyranny, 480-475 BC:

 

That Syracuse coin is spectacular!

Here's a question......is there an ancient coin book equivalent to the US Redbook? I have a method to my madness. Allow me to explain, please. When I got serious about my US coin collecting I went through a Redbook, making a list as I went along of the coins/series that I was interested in or thought attractive. I wouldn't mind having such a book on ancients, if there is any sort available.

 

I guess Sear's Roman Coins and their Values is the closest equivalent.
I wouldn't put much credence in the values it ascribes, but it does have good info and lots of illustrations.

 

Yes, this is tongue-in-cheek...

 

There really isn't the equivalent of the Redbook (US) or Krause publications for ancient coins, that I know of. The period and geography covered is just too vast to put into one concise publication.

For Athenian coinage there's Seltman (archaic), Starr (early classical), Kraay (archaic and classical) and Thompson (new style).