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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;TIF, post: 3156864, member: 56859&quot;]I don&#039;t know what &quot;the Spink catalog&quot; is but will assume it&#039;s something akin to a US coin collecting &quot;red book&quot;.&nbsp; There are probably hundreds of thousands of types of ancient Greek and Roman coins so a comprehensive book would require a staggering number of volumes and the information would be out of date by the time it was published.</p><p><br /></p><p>There are some books about ancient coins that give values but you have to understand that those values have to be interpreted as relative.&nbsp; No such books will be accurate as to current values of a given coin.&nbsp; Even that could be misleading though if a subsequently discovered hoard makes a type of coin go from rare to common.</p><p><br /></p><p>David Sear has a series of popular books with titles like &quot;Roman Coins and Their Values&quot;.&nbsp; <a href="https://www.davidrsear.com/order_books.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.davidrsear.com/order_books.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.davidrsear.com/order_books.html</a>.&nbsp; Some of the books have several editions.&nbsp; They&#039;ve been popular for decades.&nbsp; Bear in mind that any books which give prices for coins are out of date quickly but they can be used to get a general sense of relative value.</p><p><br /></p><p>To really understand what a given coin might be worth you have to research current sales records.&nbsp; CNG has extensive archives of their sales but they are just one albeit large company.&nbsp; <a href="https://www.acsearch.info/home.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.acsearch.info/home.html" rel="nofollow">ACsearch</a> includes a wide array of auction house data but to see the prices realized you need a paid subscription.&nbsp; <a href="https://pro.coinarchives.com/" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://pro.coinarchives.com/" rel="nofollow">CoinArchives Pro</a> is another database but it too is a paid subscription and it is too expensive for the casual collector.</p><p><br /></p><p>Even armed with digital databases, it can be hard to predict what a given coin will bring at auction.&nbsp; If two or more bidders are determined to have the coin, the price realized may be much higher than expected.</p><p><br /></p><p>It can be difficult to determine value for any given ancient coin because each coin was hand-struck using handmade dies.&nbsp; For a given type of coin there may be a few different dies or hundreds of different dies depending on the coin.&nbsp; The artistry and quality of the individual die varies, sometimes tremendously.&nbsp; Consider the following coins, all tetradrachms struck by the Syracusian tyrant Agathokles.&nbsp; All were sold in the last year prices realized for these four coins range from $250 to $8635.</p><p><br /></p><p>Coin A, graded TB-TTB (French for Fine to Very Fine):</p><p>[ATTACH=full]809571[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>Coin B, grade not given by the German auction house although they noted it was excellent and with a nice patina; they noted the die break on the reverse:</p><p>[ATTACH=full]809573[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>Coin C, listed as EF with fine toning:</p><p>[ATTACH=full]809574[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>Coin D, slabbed by NGC, grade of VF 2/3 3/5:</p><p>[ATTACH=full]809577[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>I could go on with dozens more examples, each with their own plusses and minuses.&nbsp; How do you account for all of the variations with a grading scheme of F, VF, EF, etc?&nbsp; You don&#039;t.&nbsp; You have to use your eyes to determine how it looks and how it compares to every other example out there and even then you&#039;ll find differences of opinion about which coin is &quot;better&quot; than another.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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