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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Mr.MonkeySwag96, post: 4385616, member: 100951&quot;]I&#039;m primarily a collector of US coins. However, recently I&#039;ve been taken over by the &quot;Dark Side.&quot; In fact, I&#039;m considering taking a break from US coins to collect ancients instead. I&#039;ve always been a fan of Egypt, Rome, and Byzantium. I love reading about ancient civilizations. I&#039;ve always wondered why I never started collecting ancients sooner. Most of my collection are US coins. However, I&#039;m starting to get bored of US coins because they aren&#039;t &quot;historical&quot; enough. Sure, Morgan dollars are cool. However, looking at a Morgan dollar doesn&#039;t teach you anything about the Wild West era. In contrast, you can learn a lot about Roman history from looking at a denarius. The Romans often depict political propaganda and historical events on their coinage. Keep in mind, newpapers and Internet didn&#039;t exist during ancient times. The ancient peoples got their news from coins. Much of what historians know about the Greeks and Romans are from their coinage.</p><p><br /></p><p>Most of the history of US coins are covered in the Red Book or Breen&#039;s Encyclopedia. Unless you&#039;re getting into die varieties (VAM, Overton), there&#039;s not a lot of reading for US coins. In contrast, heavy reading is essential to ancient numismatics. Collectors of ancients tend to be knowledgeable about classical history. In addition, there are various reference books for the multitude of ancient coins. If you like reading, then learning about ancients should be easier. If you collect coins because of their history, get into ancient coins. If you&#039;re competitive about bragging rights and like to showcase coins in Registry sets, collect US coins.</p><p><br /></p><p>I would like to collect Greek staters and tetradrachms. However Greek silver can be too expensive for my budget. So I&#039;d like to start collecting Roman Republican denarii instead. In my opinion, Roman Republicans have more interesting designs than Roman Imperials. Most of my US coin collection is slabbed. However, I would buy ancient coins raw. Unlike US coins, collectors are encouraged to handle ancient coins raw. I guess that&#039;s one advantage ancients have over US coins. The reason why US coins are meant to be slabbed is because US numismatics is a &quot;grade sensitive&quot; hobby. Even the slightest bag mark would bring down the grade of a US coin and lower its value. In contrast, an ancient coin&#039;s grade isn&#039;t as important as its eye appeal. Ancient collectors prefer an eye appealing coin with superior &quot;art style&quot; over a higher grade example with inferior &quot;art style.&quot; That&#039;s why slabs never became popular with ancient collectors. I like how the ancient coin hobby is more focused on learning about history rather than being concerned with Registry set rankings.</p><p><br /></p><p>Personally, I prefer the denarius over the monster toned cent. I&#039;ve never been a fan of Lincoln cents. In addition, I don&#039;t collect modern coins dated 1950-Present day. The denarius actually circulated as money unlike the Lincoln cent that spent decades sealed in Special Mint Set packaging.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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