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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Parthicus, post: 2609908, member: 81887&quot;]Here&#039;s my very first ancient coin, an AE3 of Constantius II (337-361) with Fel Temp Reparatio reverse of soldier spearing fallen horseman, Sirmium mint:</p><p>[ATTACH=full]570779[/ATTACH] </p><p>I bought it in winter 1992-93.&nbsp; I was living at college, and the previous year had discovered a local coin store within walking distance of campus, which restarted my childhood interest in old US and foreign coins.&nbsp; I began making regular trips to the coin store to search their foreign junk boxes, or occasionally treat myself to a slightly nicer ID&#039;d piece, and soon acquired a small group of interesting world coins, but there was no focus to my collecting.</p><p><br /></p><p>I was aware that one could collect ancient coins, and the store did have a couple of (high-priced, to a broke college student) ancients in the case, but that winter they got some junk boxes of common ancients.&nbsp; This was shortly after the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, and lots of metal-detector finds from that region were entering the market.&nbsp; The $3 box was mainly late Roman bronzes, while the $5 had larger pieces, mainly Roman provincial with a few very worn Imperial bronzes and common Greek bronzes.&nbsp; Well, at these prices how could I resist?&nbsp; I bought a few coins, including this one (it was in the $3 box).&nbsp; The relatively good state of preservation appealed to me, the inscription looked like it might be readable, and the reverse showed a military scene- what&#039;s not to like?</p><p><br /></p><p>But now I wanted to identify my treasures further, and in 1993 that was a problem.&nbsp; The Internet at that time was basically just email and text-only message boards (the World Wide Web didn&#039;t exist yet), so no help there.&nbsp; I went to the college library&#039;s reference section to see what they had.&nbsp; The only ancient coin-specific references on hand were Seth Stevenson&#039;s &quot;Dictionary of Roman Coins&quot; (which I have since found a valuable source of information, but not primarily an attribution guide) and Barclay V. Head&#039;s &quot;Historia Nummorum&quot; (ditto).&nbsp; There was also a Krause Standard Catalogue of World Coins (great book, but no use for ancients) and finally something called the &quot;Coin Atlas&quot;, which was a nicely color-illustrated coffee-table-style book with maps and coin illustrations covering all periods of history.&nbsp; By sheer good luck, one of the Roman coins in the book exactly matched my Constantius II, even including the mintmark!&nbsp; Well, now I was definitely hooked and had to know everything about my coins.&nbsp; Soon I had the local coin shop order me a copy of David Sear&#039;s Roman Coins and Their Values (4th edition, the last single-volume edition).&nbsp; It was $50 or $60- quite a large sum compared to my coin budget- but I have not regretted the purchase since.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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