Emmett's Alexandrian Coins for starters. I knew this book was more catalog, less analysis, but that's ok - I've got a pile of JB's tets I can attribute for practice. The very pleasant surprise was this Handbook of Papal Coins, which I only bought because the pictures were taken by our very own Doug Smith. However, the book is chock-full of interesting historical and numismatic analyses, and a very informative read... As you can expect, Doug's images are sharp and impeccably well-lighted, showing the coins' full details...
Yes, that's really why I bought the book. It wasn't an area of numismatics I was hugely interested in, although my interest in Medieval and Renaissance coinage has grown. But this book happens to be quite a good read.
Oops, If you read the credits page, you'll find I only took the plates of the coins but the condition series was done by Anthony Milavic and the Smithsonian provided some of their gold images. I got to shoot the author's collection which were typical Papal coins (later ones were beautiful, earlier ones not so much).
Well, my point stands - all of the images are of an equally high quality. I realize much of that depends on the printing process, but you don't get nice plates without nice pics, no matter how well you print them. I've seen plenty of coin books from the 70's and 80's with plates that aren't half as well done.
