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Posted 01/21/2026 7:25 pm
In terms of a single book or series of books that covers all world coins from prior to 1600 like Krause does post-1600, I'm sorry to say there are none (which explains why you haven't found anything in your searches).
There are books which cover specific coin series; for example, English hammered coins are covered quite well by the Spink catalogues (I suppose we'll have to start calling them Sovereign Rarities catalogues now that Spink has sold the publishing rights). But you will probably find that the best and most comprehensive catalogues for each series are written in the local language. So the best books for German coins are in German, the best books for Russian coins are in Russian, and so forth.
The closest thing I can offer you to any kind of grand unified English-language catalogue for mediaeval coins is a series of academic catalogues, known as Mediaeval European Coinage. They were printed by Cambridge University academics in conjunction with the Fitzwilliam Museum, and so far consists of 17 volumes, each of which covers a specific geographic region of Europe and time period and each of which are quite expensive. These are academic reference books, not price guides, so tend to focus a lot on history and context with the actual coin catalogue only a small portion of the books, and rarity and value are not mentioned at all. They also only go up to 1509, which still leaves a 94-year-gap between the MEC books and the Krause books. And, of course, these books only cover Europe and so do not include the vast array of mediaeval coin types from India, China and the Middle East / Islamic world; you would need specialist books for each of those series.
There are books which cover specific coin series; for example, English hammered coins are covered quite well by the Spink catalogues (I suppose we'll have to start calling them Sovereign Rarities catalogues now that Spink has sold the publishing rights). But you will probably find that the best and most comprehensive catalogues for each series are written in the local language. So the best books for German coins are in German, the best books for Russian coins are in Russian, and so forth.
The closest thing I can offer you to any kind of grand unified English-language catalogue for mediaeval coins is a series of academic catalogues, known as Mediaeval European Coinage. They were printed by Cambridge University academics in conjunction with the Fitzwilliam Museum, and so far consists of 17 volumes, each of which covers a specific geographic region of Europe and time period and each of which are quite expensive. These are academic reference books, not price guides, so tend to focus a lot on history and context with the actual coin catalogue only a small portion of the books, and rarity and value are not mentioned at all. They also only go up to 1509, which still leaves a 94-year-gap between the MEC books and the Krause books. And, of course, these books only cover Europe and so do not include the vast array of mediaeval coin types from India, China and the Middle East / Islamic world; you would need specialist books for each of those series.
Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
