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Message:: [QUOTE="medoraman, post: 1756498, member: 26302"]In response to Joe and Doug's posts, (which btw I meant no offense to Joe and appreciated him bringing this up as a subject), any coins to be brought up would be have to be done based upon your criteria of "greatest". Artistically? I would bring up early Parthian and especially Sassanid issues, as well as some Kushan and Hunnic coins. I believe the quality of die work on these large silver coins compares well to anything Romans did, and even fairly well to most Greeks. Historical importance? I have Sogdian coins depicting a camel, a coin struck on the silk road about the silk road. Considering Eastern Rome and Byzantium basically lived on this trade, as well as most Persian empires, I believe this is very historically important. I have mentioned Ban Liang cash, a coin that basically was the perfect ideal of "money" for half the world for 2000 years. I cannot think of any European coin that fits that criteria except maybe the first Lydian issues. I was simply saying I thought it was a pretty strong reflection of the dealer who wrote the book and a subset of this hobby. Yes, its a very large subset, but in my eyes not the entire "ancient coin collecting" world. Like I said, if the book was entitled "100 most beautiful ancient coins", then save for some Hunnic and Persian coins, I have no issues with it. "Greatest" is where I think the definition gets iffy.[/QUOTE]