I bought this hoard of nice uncleaned silver and copper billon, possibly ummayad sindh coins. According to the seller, these 205 coins were found in one jar and contains some unreported types. I am interested in doing research on these coins, how does one go by researching a fresh hoard of coins? And if there are unreported varieties, how to catalogue them?
Nice project ! I see one possible Ghaznavid fraction, and lots of probable Sindh coppers and billons. First thing to do would be to bring your knowledge on these to the current standard. So buy the recent Fishman catalog on the Dammas of Sindh as a first thing i would advise.
Following @THCoins advice, use the latest catalogue and, if the new coins you encounter are variants of some listed in the book, catalogue them as whatever number they are in the book but add 'var' to the end (i.e., if a coin is 112 in a book, it'll be 112var.). Then you can look into publishing the new ones somewhere like Koinon! Looks like a fun group to work with, enjoy it!
Looked up the book, Loved how its 2x the price of the lot I bought Im sure its definitely worth it though. Also I just saw the thread about uncleaned coins, I am guessing this hoard is an example of a great uncleaned lot.
Wow, that is a very cool find, Muhammad! Great job locating that. Make sure to get good pictures of each coin. John
One of my favorite parts of collecting is identifying coins I've not seen before. I hope you keep us posted on your findings. Also, I hear ya on book prices. Sometimes there's PDFs online...
Tried that haha. Will definitely keep everyone posted about it!! Also do you guys think I should leave them in the condition they are (which is farely nice) or try to clean them. I havent tried cleaning silver or billon before.
I sure don't. Those things have some BEAuuuutiful patinas. Unless you come across some BD, imo, they look great the way they are.
Yes, do not try further cleaning unless they have bronze disease or if one is completely encrusted (nothing to lose at that point, but none I see look like they fall into that category).
I would advice against cleaning in this case. The coins have been cleaned before (and it looks like a wax has been applied?), and are nicely patinated. There are some green and crusty coins which might benefit from slight cleaning, but cleaning bronze or billion coins is notoriously difficult.
Agree with above, the only thing to really clean off these is the patina. What is left for encrustation is probably best left alone, they are really nice as is.
Some interesting rectangular bits which seem blank?. One of them has some vertical and horizontal lines.
This ones the only silver looking one. I am guessing this is the ghaznavid fraction? @THCoins Obverse has the typical legend inside circle surrounding by a bordering legend. The reverse had dirt ebcrusted on it. used a toothpick to clean most of it off to reveal the legend. Also spot a border legend surrounding the central. Now the hard part is making sense of this bubbly legend.
I would guess that the center text in the first picture of your silver specimen reads "Al-Sultan / al-a'zam". So the text on the other side is the important one for attribution.
So Ive tried to make sense of the coins by drawing them out. This is what I have so far. The coins usually have a border with dots arranged in the border, numbering from 3 to 9. Some coins are Random dots scattered around on both sides. In other words, these coins are Wack. Heres what Ive drawn till now. The x mark is due to nothing being visible on the reverse. Here is coin number 8.
That looks like great fun, @Muhammad Niazi ! It reminds me of when I purchased a hoard of Judaean prutot.
Great effort Muhammad ! The "Dots within square" types are quite typical for the Sindh coppers of the period. With your large hoard you have the rare possibility to group different specimen, as a single specimen often will not allow reliable reading. Here a similar one which i have had for a long time (11 mm, 1.47 gr):
