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Coin Books - Handbook of Ancient Greek and Roman Coins
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List Price: $14.95
Our Price: $8.13
Your Save: $ 6.82 ( 46% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Golden Books
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 737.4938
EAN: 9780307093622
ISBN: 030709362X
Label: Golden Books
Manufacturer: Golden Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 288
Publication Date: 1995-05
Publisher: Golden Books
Studio: Golden Books
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: Handbook of Ancient Greek and Roman Coins
Comment: Book has some nice pictures and descriptions. Novice collectors will enjoy it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent intro to ancient coins
Comment: This was the first book I purchased on the topic of ancient coins, and it provides a first-rate introduction to the hobby. It's a good general overview of what is available, and is written in a style that is welcoming to the greenest of beginners.
This book would be a very good "first book" on the subject, and it would also make a great gift for someone who is just getting started on an ancient coin collection, especially for the price!
Customer Rating:
Summary: An easy way to get into Greek and Roman coin collecting
Comment: This well illustrated book is quick and easy to read and provides some basic information to for those intending to collect ancient Greek and Roman coins. It will help you recognize many common coins. It will allow you to interpret the inscriptions and in many cases the imagery on these coins. It is inexpensive.
Some things will not be found in it, however. Republican Roman coins (a fascinating area) are strangely not covered at all. There is no information regarding assessing the quality of coins, cleaning them, recognizing fakes, determining price or caring for your collection. For this type of information you should look at Wayne Sayles' more extensive series. For coin valuation David Sear is invaluable. This book is a cheap and simple way to form an impression about ancient Greek and Roman coin collecting. Eventually, recognizing that the price of almost any coin described in the book is far greater than that of the book itself, serious collectors will want to invest in more extensive reference sources. One must start somewhere however, and this is a good place to do so.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Lots of Pictures
Comment: I read only the part of this book dedicated to Greek coins (my area of interest) and learned much. There are many (black & white) pictures of coins as well as text dedicated to the inscriptions and people/gods found on the coins. However, the amount of information contained barely scratches the surface of the subject matter. I would buy the book again, but will continue to look for another title with more in-depth information.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Inexpensive Introduction to Greek and Roman Coins
Comment: This is the book to begin with if you think you may have an interest in ancient Western coins. This covers Greek coins from 680 B.C. to Roman Coins up to 476 A.D. The scope of this book is basically European coinage for roughly 1,000 years. What this book does NOT cover: Byzantine, Persian and Far East ancient coins.
About 60% of the book (the first half of the book) is devoted to Greek coins, and the other 40% to Roman (mostly imperial) coins. There are lots of black and white pictures of real coin examples in both sections of the book. I will be focusing mostly on the Roman section.
THE GREEK COIN SECTION:
This begins with a description of how ancient coins were made.
Greek 101 is not a prerequisite! The book teaches you how to read Greek characters on the coin inscriptions.
It also goes through a pictorial history of Greek coinage: The Period of Archaic Art (680-480 B.C.), The Period of Transitional Art (480-415 B.C.), The Period of Finest Art (415-336 B.C.), The Period of Later Fine Art (336-280 B.C.)The Period of the Decline of the Art (280-146 B.C.), The Period of Continued Decline in Art (146-27 B.C.), and finally The Imperial Period (27 B.C. - 268 A.D.). There are lots and lots of pictures.
THE ROMAN COIN SECTION:
This was what I primarily bought this book for. There is a brief history of early Roman coins (how they were cast instead of struck), but there isn't much in the way of text or pictorial examples in regard to Roman Republican Coinage...this is nearly all Imperial (From Caesar Augustus (29 B.C.) to Romulus Augustus (476 A.D.).
It goes through the denominations of Roman coins. It gives relative Roman values of: Aureus to Denarius to Sesterius to Dupondius to As to Quadrans. What it does NOT give much hint about ancient values is of later denominations like Antoninianus, Follis, Siliqua, and Solidus.
There is a big picture section on Reverse Types of Roman coins, going through all the gods and goddesses that appear on the backs.
There is an excellent section on how to read Obverse inscriptions. This is probably the most helpful section for the beginner. Included also is an extensive list of Emperor's names as they most commonly appear on the coins.
Finally, there is an Emperor-by-Emperor coin-by-coin history of Rome, with very brief comments about each ruler. Only one coin per ruler is listed, so don't expect to find a lot of examples of each Emperor.
CONCLUSION:
What this book will NOT do is give you the present-day values of coins, the relative rarity of a coin, and it speaks nothing about grading coins. If you have poor-quality late Roman coins that you are trying to attribute, this book will be of minimal help. The best book I have found on the Subject of Roman Coins is David Van Meter's Handbook of Roman Imperial Coins: A Complete Guide to the History, Types, Symbols and Artistry of Roman Imperial Coinage. It is much more in-depth, but of course, it is a lot more expensive as well.
This Handbook of Ancient Greek & Roman Coins serves as a fine introduction to these two subjects. Without breaking the bank, the huge amount of information contained in this 288-page Volume will give you a good idea if you want to pursue this subject further. For the range of coverage and the price, you can't go wrong.
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Editorial Reviews:
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The Handbook of Ancient Greek and Roman Coins combines the two main references that collectors have depended on for nearly forty years in the study of ancient Greek and Roman coins. The book touches upon every aspect of ancient coinage, from how the pieces were made to what their symbolism meant to the people who used them. It contains all the information needed to properly identify and attribute coins to that era. Beginning and advanced collectors alike will benefit from data, charts, and more than 1000 full-size photographs that depict the actual coins and show how to interpret dates and inscriptions. The book contains important information on:
--Reading Greek and Roman coin inscriptions
--Identifying emperors and dates on Roman coins
--Symbols, city names, and historical and mythological characters
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