Best Book/Catalog For Studying Ancient Greek & Roman Coins

RIC, or The Roman Imperial Coinage is a volume set of books that are for Roman Imperial coins. You can learn a lot from skimming through it but it is more of a reference set. There is also AORTA, ERIC I and II. There are A LOT of books out there.

You can also go to FORVM and look at the list of books you can purchase there or use it as a list of books. A lot are available as PDF download somewhere. You'll have to look around.

Here two links for a lot of good information.

http://esty.ancients.info/numis/sitelinks.html

http://dougsmith.ancients.info/

The problem as I see it is that not only is there no single book to cover this subject well but that there can be no such book. ERIC II tried very hard to list most coins in the Imperial series but you really don't get a lot of information about the coins or any pictures of both sides of a coin. Sear tries but we have to realize that his Greek books list a very few of the most commonly seen types so the chances of finding an exact match for your coin is not very good. A good book covering ancient coins would be at least 50 volumes with 1000 pages each. Not only would there be listings but hard information on the how, when, what and why in addition to the dry laundry lists. If such a work were to appear by magic today, many of us don't have enough time left to read the set and those that do will find the first volume out of date before they get around to reading the last. Many have tried to summarize generally the big points or cover in depth narrow subjects but there is no 'good book' for coins. All we can do is pick a place to start that matches our personal desires and realize that it will take a lifetime.

I really wish someone would write a book that I could recommend without reservation for beginners as an obvious place to start but it just has not been published yet.