Hi All, well, I did it I finally bought my first acient coin. I picked it up at the Baltimore show. I also picked up a few other coins that I will post on another thread. I was looking at hammered crusader coins at the time but this one just caught my eye! Can you verify it's attribution? Any and all opinions welcome, thanks!
Wow Merlin, you did it !!!! Its an Emperor Phillip the Arab. We just had a long thread going on about this guy. Check it out in the World & ancients forum !!! I will give it a go and try to ID it for you. Its a nice one.
Nice pick up! Eight months ago I bought my first one.....now I have 40. Stash some cash because you're hooked now.:yes:
I think I got it (Sear 2556) (RIC 62) reverse - FIDES EXERCITVS with 4 standards. Obverse IMP (Emperor) Philipp ... AUG (Augusas) Its a cool Antonianus Merlin and it looks like the silver wash is still intact !!!! Great pick up. Date around 245 AD. Way to go. Value about $75
Nice! I got it for $60!, I found an awesome dealer, he had some really nice stuff and good prices too
Merlin. Fides Exercits means this "Fidelity of the army" Which makes sense. He was one of the "Military Emperors"
Can someone suggest a good book on ancients? I need to learn more about these before the next show! Thanks!
Morning Merlin. Well all the volumes of the RIC would cost you over a grand. (if you could find it) However, a more reasonable choice is David Sears - "Roman coins & thier values" and Zander Klawans - "Handbook of Ancient greek & roman coins"
ERIC 2: Encyclopedia of Roman Imperial Coins is another book thats great for newbies and pro's alike. It costs about $150 but the author lists a copy once a week & can be had for sometimes $110 or less. Theyre is also a digital version thats free to download & own if you wanna get your feet wet. http://www.dirtyoldbooks.com/eric.html
ERIC is a decent beginner tool. If you want something worth citing, find a copy of RIC (The Roman Imperial Coinage) - unfortunately, that's a very expensive, out of print work. For the most up-to-date research, consult CGB's Rome VI auction, cataloged by Michel Prieur. Its readable online here, in French: http://www.cgb.fr/monnaies/rome/r06/index.html. Google translate should do a good enough job that you can work through it.
I regularly post disagreement with book suggestions for beginners since I believe that someone who owns one coin should think twice before spending $1200 on RIC or $150 on ERIC II. There are many worthwhile resources online that will do you more good than catalog listings of just Roman coins. Of course I'm prejudiced toward mine and suggest you start with my favorite pages: http://dougsmith.ancients.info/voc.html I wasn't at Baltimore until Saturday and my favorite dealer there (I bought 17 coins from him and a total of 6 others from other dealers) was apologizing for being so picked over since Friday had been a big day for him. I heard two other dealers moaning over how slow sales were but their prices were set high to guarantee they only sold coins to people desperate for that coin. There was quite a variation of ancient dealers there ranging from reasonably priced and friendly to some I don't even bother to look at their stock anymore. All I can say is shop around. If you are willing to travel there are much smaller shows in Richmond and Fredericksburg later this year as well as another big Baltimore show. There is nothing like seeing the coins in person before you buy.
I see I'm not alone in having a first and only ancient (denarius of Trajan). Not a clue as to what I paid perhaps 20 years ago.