How Many Ancient Coins In Your Collection.

Catalog? What do you mean, catalog?

I try to "catalog" my coins by putting them on Numista, but for ancient coins this is exceedingly imperfect (both because Numista is still missing many ancient coin types, and because many of whatever types it does have are organized by sub-variety).
But other than that...

...I have a ziploc bag next to me on this desk that contains 19 ancient coins that I bought from a particular dealer a few months ago. For many of the coins, I'm still not entirely sure what they even are.
Some of those 19 did end up photographed to be posted for identification on CCF; I think one or two actually made it to CCF.

I'm looking at those 19 coins now. There's a badly cleaned Kushan and what looks like a barbarous radiate, a huge Byzantine follis next to a tiny Chach - I think it was Chach? - copper. For some others I don't know what they could be at all.
I'm pretty sure one of them is a late medieval silver. I don't even recall if I successfully identified that silver.

Catalog? What catalog? Haha don't be silly.

(But I should definitely actually go and take at least some pics of those 19 coins, and then actually post them on CCF. Let's make it my project for this weekend: the 19-coin lot identification day.)


...I estimate that my collection contains about a hundred assorted ancients, by the way.
Though the boundary is somewhat fuzzy - I do, after all, have a coin from every century (all 26 of them, that is).

Greek gold:
Macedon Philip 11 gold stater, Pella, 8.56 grams. Thunderbolt below chariot, Le Rider 121. Bought from Spinks London 1978, GB680 Pounds. Have sale documents and polaroids.

Roman gold:
Augustus aureus. Rev. Caius and Lucuis Casars. BMC513, C42, Ric 350. Bought from collection of Seaby's employee, Sydney 1992, for AUD $750. Have sale documents and polaroids.

Vespasian Aureus, Rev. 'COS.ITER.TR POT' Pax seated left. 6.96 grams, struck Rome AD70. Ric 10, BMC26, sim. Sear 672.
Bought Spinks London, 1977. Have sale documents and polaroids.

Constantius 11 Solidus, Nicomedia Mint, Sim Sear 3988. 4.6 grams. Rev, Roma & Constantinopolis seated holding shield 'GLORIA REPVBLICAE in shield 'VOT.EX.MVLT.XXX' BOUGHT Sydney, 2013, for AUD 795.

Leo 1 (457-74) Solidus. Constantinople. Bought Sydney, Aud $600, 2013.

Byzantine:
Phocas (602-10), solidus. Rev. angel standing left, holdinfg staff and globus cruciger. 4 83 grams. Bought Sydney, 2014, AUD 525.

Constantine 11 (668 685) tremmissis. Constantinople. Ex D.J. Foster collection. (Noble Numismatics records) Sear 1160. Bought for AUD 300, 2015.

Theophilus (828-42) solidus, Syracuse mint. thick dumpy flan. Sear 1670. ex D.J. Foster collection (Noble Numismatic records). Bought I.S Wright for $795, 2016.

Indian:
Kushan gold stater, Kipananda, 330-60 AD, Obv. king standing, rev. Ardoshoko enthroned, Mac 3584, Bought Sydney, I.S. Wright for AUD 400, 2013.

Ceylon Chola gold kahavanu, 3rd type. c/- 990 1070 AD. Ref. Michener non Islamic 625. Bought AUD 450, Spinks Noble Sydney, 2013.


Celtic Britain:
Durotrigues c/- 58-45 BC base gold stater, 5.2 grams. Spinks Noble lot1684. Sale 111., 2014. Mack 317.


The earliest Isalmic gold that I have just misses out in being more that 1,000 years old. (Ghazvavid and Sulayhid dinars). I needed help to have those coins properly authenticated and attributed. Noble Numismatics helped me out in this regard.


All coins in either Fine or very Fine condition.

It looks like I have 14 coins prior to 500AD.

My catalog system is to keep symbolic links (to the real photos) in a single directory. The file names tell me what the coin is. For example:

[520]_480BC-450BC_TR_Paphlagonia_AR_drachm_mSinope_1o_2016-09-02-00.56.53 ZS DMap.tif

[849]_151BC_IT_Roman_Republic_AR_denarius_mRome_1o__2016-08-19-07.45.46 ZS DMap.tif 

[938]_62BC_IT_Roman_Republic_AR_denarius_mRome_1o_2016-08-03-04.56.48 ZS DMap.tif

80_IT_Roman_Empire_AR_denarius_mRome_1sNGC_DPP_2016_08_05__0027.TIF

One thing to notice here is that he first three images were processed by Zerene Stacker (hence the "DMap.tiff" at the end

I need to catch up on some photos, I maintain a separate file with all my photos and use a reference number on the catalog to where the photo is located.

Someday if I ever get around to it I would like to catalog the collection in this manner.

Hope you guys don't mind me stepping in but just wanted to say that I don't have a single ancient coin in my 50 + year collection . Not because I don't find them interesting and loaded with history but because in my mind I feel that they are too easy to FAKE . I've always been fascinated with ancients ,but have no knowledge of them so I kept my distance from ancients all those years .
Do any of you guys worry about fakes ,or is there an easy way of knowing genuine coins from the ones that are created in someone's basement ?

I think I'm back up to around 70 this time around, mostly Parthian with some Seleucid, Bactrian and Indo-Greeks thrown in. When I collected strictly Greeks I was over 250 but sold them to re-focus my collection. I use an old program I picked up called Bento. You can design it any way you want - adding different colors, categories, drop down boxes, etc. - whatever information you want to capture. You can also format it any way you want by moving the data field around in almost any configuration you want. Seems to work great and has survived several updates to my MAC operating system. It's not sold anymore (I think it was a Filemaker product) but perhaps can be found on ebay.

Steve S.

I have always been intrigued by the coinage of post Roman Europe, up to 1,000 AD, which is always expensive and very difficult to obtain.
The only representatives in my collection that covers this period is a rather humble Anglo Saxon bronze sceat of Eanred, and two silver Islamic dirhems, (Umayyad and Abbasid).

Perhaps not surprising, because very little coinage was needed during the European Dark Ages. Some contemporary Islamic coinages did find their way into Europe in this period.
The rest of my Islamic silver is more than 1,000 years old, and I needed professional help in it's attribution.

The only reasonable book in my library that covers this period is
Coins of Medieval Europe, by
Philip Grierson.