Where or what books would you suggest for a real newbie beginner to learn about ancient coins? I don't know enough to know what areas I will want to look into (Roman? Celti?) Seems over whelming right now at the begining. Any tips? I got some uncleaned ancients awhile back, and after soaking in olive oil ...etc. They still look fairly sluggish to me. I can make out a few details, but "Me thinks I have been had". (Was only a few bucks for 12 so not that bad).
http://www.forumancientcoins.com/ http://www.wildwinds.com/ http://www.romancoins.info/ http://www.davidrsear.com/roman_coins.html some helpfull links...wildwinds and the forum at Forumancientcoins, I have found as a huge help...the last link is to David Sears who is the premiere publisher when it comes to ancient coins...His books cover ancient greece to byzantium...
A good basic book for Imperial Romans is "The Handbook of Roman Imperial Coins" by David Van Meter Also hit http://www.ancients.info As far as "being had" with the uncleaneds, most of what you get with them won't be overly impressive. By the time they reach the dealers that sell them they've been picked through a few times & any of the exceptional stuff have usually been removed.
http://www.ancientcoins.ca/ this is a great place for uncleaned (I think bonedigger turned me on to this place)...you can pick and choose, get semi-cleaned and know what you are getting or get completely uncleaned and take your chances...I have bought several times from this place and have always gotten a few good ones...good ones as in they are identifiable and in pretty good shape. I even got a few worthy of being in my perm. collection. The best thing about this place is that its not all constantine and his kin but a good mix of all different times..I got a nice little lot from this place that had some Claudius II, Aurilian, Valentinian, etc... But as uncleaned goes, you often get what you paid for, more than likely you will not get the best examples...but there are good dealers out there... I bought a lot of 100 once from a guy on e-bay who said he was in the balkans and got easily 20 really nice coins (mostly constantine and his kids), they are out there...closer to the source the better...the more they change hands, the worse they are... I myself choose to buy COMPLETELY uncleaned....you will never get gold and seldom if ever get silver but at least when they are completely crusted over, its as tough for the dealer to see whats under the crust as it is for you when you get them... The link above will send you semi cleaned with the assurance that they are at least identifiable...or you can take your chances with completely uncleaned...I do the later and I get mixed results but almost every batch of 5 yeilds a good one in decent shape.
these are 2 I got out of 2 different lots of 5...they arent the best but they far better than the slugs you get from a lot of other places...there is nothing worse that getting a lot, doing the work to clean them and getting all slugs...out of maybe 3-4 lots I have gotten maybe 4 slugs from this guy, if you buy the semi-cleaned you wont get any...but they are more expensive.
For Celtic stuff check out Chris Rudd http://www.celticcoins.com/ His site also gives a list of recomended books and the coin lists start from about £10 De Orc :kewl:
Other people recomended Van Meter's to me but seems to be a hard to get book (sold out?). Can anyone give a hint were to find it on-line ?
Probably the best introduction to the subject of collecting `ancients' is the book `Ancient Coin Collecting - Volume 1' by Wayne G. Sayles. This volume gives a pretty good overview to the subject, and subsequent volumes cover the main areas of collecting in greater depth. It is relatively cheap and readily available (ISBN 0-87341-442-x). New it costs $24.95, (subsequent volumes are similarly priced) but if you keep your eyes open on ebay, you are likely to be able to buy these books cheaper. Once you know which areas are likely to be of particular interest to you, you can obtain (generalist or specialist) literature to match.
