Post Your Favorite Ancient Coin Book

Not necessarily my favorite, but a delightful book that I have posted about before.

An Inventory of Romano-British Coin Hoards

This book is not part of the CHRB (Coin Hoards from Roman Britain) series, but it is a fantastic addition to your library if you have any interest in British hoards...or hoards...or just fascinating numismatic history.

"This long-awaited inventory collates material from more than 1,900 coin hoards, comprising c.640,000 coins, found in Britain and dating from the 1st to early 5th century AD. Robertson describes it as `a corpus amenable to unlimited exploitation'. Entries are listed chronologically by Emperor and include descriptions of the coins, details on the find spots, the containers of the hoards and objects found in association. This large volume forms an important source of reference for Roman Britain and numismatic studies in general, and highlights the continued practice of hoarding throughout the Roman occupation of Britain."


Lots of interesting information and fun trivia like how the writer of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recorded that in the year 418 the Romans collected all the hoards of coins that were in Britain and hid some in the earth and carried some with them to Gaul.

or the story of how in 1858 farmworkers found the Cowlam hoard while plowing..."The twelve lads who were ploughing all wanted some (coins) in their pockets...you should have seen the lads reaching over the pankin, and scrimpin the money in...They said "We'll nivver work na mair."

how about this-- did people in antiquity collect coins? Well, "In 1794, was also found at Rowley Regis, an earthen globe, containing about 1200 similar coins in silver, which, when all together, formed a complete series of Roman emperors." Gent. Mag. 1796


520 pages, stuffed with numismatic tidbits. It's not often that coin books are fun, but this one is for me.

 

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My favorite book I can’t really read...yet:
N.Ignarra, De Palaestra Neopolitana, 1770 (first numismatist to argue man-faced bull is Acheloios):


My second favorite book is my own, since it really is a reflection of my soul. If a specialist book doesn’t exist for your specialty, it means you should write it:

Tied for third:

 

If I could propose a multi volume series with enlarged colour plates/ descriptions/ rarity guide/ latest auction results.....this would be my choice.
A Four vol. series for all known electrum/ gold/ silver coinage from all ancient cultures 670BC- 1454AD. Hopefully plates would be of supberb quality. Maybe this will result in it actually happening

 

threads like this always end up costing me money!

 

But its a nice way to spend $$$$$$

 

An excellent little pocket book with one of the finest Claudius aureus obverse pics on the cover I have ever seen:

 

Victor's review made me go after a copy of this work. It came in today, I just unwrapped it a few moments ago (I bought it from Charles Davis via VCoins, he doesn't have a copy now but I am sure he can get one soon, it was $40). Only took 5 days from order to delivery.

As I said, a few moments ago. I literally just flipped through the thing and was instantly hooked. I cant wait to read it all the way through!

Ken