I'm looking for some suggestions on good reference book(s) if you are interested in collecting Ancient coins. Completely new to the world of ancients, but do have some past experience collecting US coins. Geek, Roman, and coins with religious references are what I'm mostly interested in learning more about. Thanks in advance
We have to know WHAT ancients you are interested in sir. The field is so huge, there simply is no standard answer to your question. Personally I own about 700 and am no where complete. If you can narrow it down to Roman, Byzantine, a type of Greek, etc it would help.
These are the book series I was reading. I admit, I did not continue. But I was only getting my feet wet in Ancients, having never owned an actual coin. Anyway, here you go. Great place to start: http://www.amazon.com/Wayne-G.-Sayles/e/B000APSN2W
On my beginner's educational site: http://esty.ancients.info/numis/ on page 3 I mention some books: http://esty.ancients.info/numis/intro3.html and on this page I go into greater detail with a page of book reviews: http://esty.ancients.info/numis/learnmore.html Most public libraries have something and university libraries have more. I recommend you check out local free sources. You might even ask a local US coin dealer if he knows someone local who would be interested in showing you his books (and coins!)
if interested in greeks, this is a good starter book. http://www.amazon.com/Collecting-Gr...973629&sr=8-2&keywords=collecting+greek+coins there's tons of online stuff as well, hit valentinians links and hits dougs smith's page.. http://www.forumancientcoins.com/dougsmith/
I really suggest beginners start with the online materials certainly including Warren's pages and mine both mentioned above. You will want to buy books on paper sooner rather than later but you need to figure out which books to buy first and how much you want to spend on books as well as coins. This is more easily done using free online materials than randomly buying a thousand dollars worth of books that may or may not overlap your interests. You might even decide to buy a book and seek out coins covered by that book rather than trying to collect generally and not owning the book that covers them. http://www.forumancientcoins.com/dougsmith/book.html I also have a few book reviews (above) on my pages but some of them are as much to talk you out of buying a book that is not likely to fulfill your needs. There are some books that I value greatly and use regularly but I believe their purchase and reading might be better put off for a couple years while you develop a feel for the language of coins. One place to start s here: http://www.forumancientcoins.com/dougsmith/voc.html
I'm only newly serious about collecting ancients and the field has its own languages. A site that has been very helpful for me is NumisWiki. http://www.forumancientcoins.com/numiswiki/view.asp Many questions I had were answered by searching around there. Check out the article "Ancient Coin Collecting 101." http://www.forumancientcoins.com/numiswiki/view.asp?key=Ancient Coin Collecting 101
