Your Focus Of Interest In Ancient Coins?

Definitely historical first and foremost, with little bits of all the rest.

Medieval coins have always felt strange and alien to me, but Roman coins not only "feel" like modern coinage, but the portraits look like the actual person who lived 1500-2000 years ago.

Uncirculated ancient coins tell the story of a son, husband, or father who never came back from the war. Heavily worn coins tell the story of hundreds of hands buying bread made from wheat cultivars that have been extinct for over a thousand years.

I'm also fascinated by imitative coins of all cultures. When holding a barbarous radiate, how many of my great^80 grandparents used it? When a Chaulukya die cutter was engraving the reverse of his Gadhaiya Paisa, did he even know he was engraving human attendants, or just told how many dots and where to put them?

I want to say numismatic, but I've never cared much about the minor varieties.
I want to say historical, but I have Asperger's so I don't really connect much to anybody, ancient or modern.
I want to say mercantile, but I have never sold an ancient coin yet (I did sell some modern coins, but it was still a tiny minority).
I want to say academic, but I don't know that much history, and I definitely don't care much about economics.
I want to say artistic, but for many of the ancient coins I have I probably won't be able to tell what's even pictured on them, and for far too many of the rest it's just some kind of Victory. Also they're mostly in rather ugly condition, anyway.
I want to say anthropological, but, well, what I said about academic except more. Not much else to say.


...Ultimately, it's probably mainly historical (with a dash of numismatic, mostly to help focusing the historical aspects, and a dash of mercantile because of my tiny budget), for much the same reasons as Finn235 above (and I even agree with him about the medieval coins).

Unlike him, I'm not particularly fascinated by imitatives, but this is mainly because I could hardly afford any recognizable imitatives on my budget anyway.
(I do rather like my Bukhar Khudat though!)

Historical for me, with artistic a close second.

Historical/artistic for me

numismatic. I love researching coins and try and find them in as many references as I have access to! About a decade ago it was mercantile. I have also developed a keen interest in coin photography.

Primarily historical. Coins are a continuum, forming part of and bearing witness to the story of civilization from the time they were invented up to today. It's one of the few ancient inventions that we still use today.

I like to look at it this way. Suppose you were to hop in a time machine, go back in tome to ancient Greece or Rome, kidnap someone at random and bring them forwards and dump them here in our time. They'd be completely lost in our modern technological society and not have the faintest idea about how most of it works, but if you give them a modern coin, they'd have a pretty good idea what it was, and what you were supposed to do with it.