Nice Little Axumite Silver Coin

good job SAP and as always very informative..

Good for you Sap. The long wait makes it exciting- This area is little known- May I ask how or why your interest in such a remote historical setting? Thanks Dewey

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Originally posted by habiru001
Good for you Sap. The long wait makes it exciting- This area is little known- May I ask how or why your interest in such a remote historical setting? Thanks Dewey

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Well, I'm really a "One From Every Country" collector - and Axum was a fairly significant country in the 3rd to 6th centuries that I didn't have. It's historically significant in being the first nation to formally adopt Christianity as its official religion. And the coins are key artifacts for the Axumite historical record.

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Originally posted by Myst
Do you get interested in going after a particular coin because of history you already know, or do you learn the history of coins you find that you like the look of?

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The old veteran collectors down at the coin club always say, "First the book, then the coin". Of course, you generally need a couple of coins before buying the book, but it's still a good rule. The "book" in this case was Wayne Sayles' "Ancient Coin Collecting Volume VI: Non-Classical Cultures". It's full of fascinating info on all the obscure, rarely collected (non-Greek and non-Roman) coin series. I read the chapter on Axum and had to have one. A couple of timely articles in National Geographic helped whet the appetite, too. Though it is true that I'll often but a coin from someplace I've never heard of, then spend ages going through the books and websites researching it up. That's fun, too.

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Originally posted by Myst
Ancient coins fascinate me but I really dont know anything about them which worries me a little. I would have no idea of where to start plus a lot of the ones I've seen I really like the look of are a bit out of my price range. Are there any particular websites you'd recommend for research etc Sap?

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The best ancients reference websites are Wildwinds and the FORVM forum, though Wikipedia often has good background info and occasional coin tidbits. You are wise to be concerned about the unknown factors in Ancient collecting. While most of the ancient coins around are genuine, it's probably fair to say that counterfeits are a bigger problem for ancients than for other coin collecting areas. You can get plenty of cheap, genuine ancient coins - but they aren't going to be the most beautiful, artistic or historically significant ones. "Yeah, sure - it looks like something you found on the road" is my mother's typical reaction to seeing one of my ancient acquisitions.

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Originally posted by Sap

"Yeah, sure - it looks like something you found on the road" is my mother's typical reaction to seeing one of my ancient acquisitions.

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That is so funny! I had this perfectly clear mental picture of a mother saying that, I can even see my mum saying it too!

There is just that something indefinable about a coin this old, though. Who has owned it, spent it, where has it been, how many hundreds (or thousands) of years has it lain somewhere forgotten. That is the fascination. I can see why you would pursue this area of collecting.

As I said, my main motivation in buying it was to have a coin from Axum; this particular one is simply the first I'd actually won on ebay. I did particularly want this one (rather than the half-dozen other Axumites this seller was selling) because it was silver, well-centred, and legible.