Ancient coin collecting by Wayne Sayles. It gives a general background of each area, along with some ideas on how to collect. It defines many things for the beggining collector and give you a list of all the roman emperors and most dieties. I had a copy but gave it away once it became pretty much useless for me. stainless
While Sayle's book is a decent introduction to the basics of ancient coins, there's no reference guide that covers all types of ancient coins, at least not in any usable detail. You need to get at least a little more specific. Like, do you want to look at Greek, Roman, Judean, Parthian, or Sasanian coins? Is there any particular time period or coin type you want to look into specifically? In addition, what aspects of ancient coins do you want to look at? Do you want something that tells you history, or do you want something that's more just a listing of types? Do you want a rarity and/or value guide?
Thanks all for the information. I had hoped to find something like the World Coin catalogue I have, about 3 inches thick and more of a listing of types, values and pics for identification. Anything out there that covers them all or do I have to buy many guides?
If you get the new edition of The Encyclopedia of Roman Imperial Coinage (ERIC II), you'll have a very detailed checklist of Roman Imperial and Byzantine coinage. It's as big as a phone book and not cheap, but that's a major chunk of ancient coinage covered. It's probably the most number of coins you'll see covered in any one book. But there are far too many ancient coins to ever have references for all of them. Entire civilizations with complex coinage have passed into history with very little literature to document it all.
He's also made available a digital version of the book. Its in 5 chapters and at $5 for each chapter. Chapter 2 was released not to long ago so I dunno when chapter 3 will be released.
Yeah, there's nothing quite like that for ancients in general. The most comprehensive that I am aware of is ERIC II, which sounds pretty good for what it is (I don't have a copy yet, unfortunately), but it only covers Roman Imperial and Byzantine coinage. So you're not only out of luck for the coins of pre-Roman Greece, Iran, China, etc., but you won't get Roman republican or Roman provincial* coinage. If I recall correctly, it doesn't have prices, either. Ancient coinage in general is far more complex than any modern coinage, so it's really hard to make something like the World Coin catalog you mention. Dies were all hand carved and hand struck back then, so there is a lot more variation in terms quality of style, strike, and die conditions that all greatly effect price, making it somewhat difficult to pin one price on one coin type. What exactly makes up a "type" is complicated as well, and it can vary from catalog to catalog. For instance, if you have two coins with otherwise identical design elements, but one small guy has a different hat, is that different coin type? That depends on what reference you're using. I recall somewhere on Doug Smith's site where he gave the example of the falling horseman coins of the Constantinian dynasty, where one catalog gave this coin type one entry, while another gave it hundreds! In addition to all of that, ancient coins would often be made with many designs at once, and even very short lived Roman emperors can have dozens of clearly different designs. Then there's the fact that we don't have surviving mintage numbers for anything. We can figure out some level of rarity by what people currently have, but if some guy in Bulgaria digs up the right jar, a previously rare type can become much more common. All that isn't to say that there's aren't catalogs that are useful or ones that are so commonly used for certain areas that they're pretty much standard. It's just that such catalogs aren't as definitive as ones for modern coins would be, and any price or rarity guide should be taken as much less reflective of the current market than guides for more recent coins. You can't easily approach ancients like more modern coins, but if you put in the time and effort, collecting them can be very rewarding. *In case you don't already know, In addition to Rome's centralized coinage system, Individual regions and cities would often have their own supplementary coinage system for local use. This is a massively complex group of coinage in and of itself, as hundreds of locations made many types of coins, and you usually need separate references from Roman Imperial and Republican coinage. This coinage is also referred to as "Greek Imperial Coinage" and "Roman Civic Coinage."
Sure..scroll down a bit and find the "ebook", easy to see. http://www.dirtyoldcoins.com/shop/misc/index.html
Just an opinion: Please understand that my coin books take up over 20 feet of shelf space and a few boxes in the attic but I do not recommend beginners buy a lot of expensive books until they understand a need. The amount of online help including Wildwinds, acsearch and a hundred others has really blossomed in the last 15 years so dead tree books are not nearly as indispensable as once they were. I do like Wayne Sayles volume 1 overview and followup books because they are not catalogs but explain why you might like to collect coins. In time, you will want other books (want mine?) but I would not buy RIC until I had a hundred Roman coins and forsaw adding a thousand more in the next few years. Learn to use the online resources and discover places you want more information. Then buy those books. I only bought about a dozen in the last year.
Pretty much sums up my thoughts exactly, which is why I recommended Sayles series. I don't own any reference books because of budget reasons, I don't really have a select area of collecting, and like you said wildwinds, catbikes, and many other sites (including yours) give out enough info to live with. stainless
