Collecting for Beginners

As with any new endeavour, starting out collecting ancient Greek coins has a bit of a learning curve. It will take some time before you are settled into a focus for your collection and are comfortable with how to research, buy, display and generally enjoy your coins. I would recommend reading the two volumes of Ancient Coin Collecting by Wayne G. Sales which provides broad practical advice for the novice collector and is easy to read, but in the meantime here are some pointers.

Ancient Coin Grading

When you are new to collecting the grades associated with coins may be confusing as a grade of ‘good’ can relate to something that barely resembles a coin. Think of this as grade inflation. Given that ancient coins have survived for over 2000 years in storage or circulation you will not generally see gradings of FDC (Fleur de coin), Mint State or About Mint State – these are used rather in the collection of modern coins. In practical terms you will be collecting coins in a range from Extremely Fine at the top through to good at the bottom, with a lot of qualifiers in between. For a guide I would recommend the section on grading on Forum Ancient Coins. However, the best advice provided may well be “For ancient coins, eye appeal is much more important than grade. Eye appeal really is whatever looks good to you!”

The Athenian tetradrachms below have been graded on auction sites as (top left to bottom right) Good Fine, About Very Fine, Near Very Fine and Extremely Fine.

Buying Ancient Coins

There are many places you can buy coins, from wandering into a numismatic shop, browsing at a coin fair, working with an on-line retailer, buying through an auction house or though weekly or monthly publications such as Coin News. Each has its own benefits and drawbacks and the only one I would shy away from as a novice would be sites such as eBay. Retail outlets tend to have quite a high mark-up over the price you can pay at auctions, but they give you the peace of mind that the coin has been expertly authenticated. Also don't be afraid to offer the retailer a lower price - they are usually open to negotiation. One thing to be aware of is that not all auctions are the same - some are run by well respected companies where the coins going through their hands are authenticated, others are simply obtaining coins from private individuals or smaller companies and reselling for a mark-up. A bit of research to see the originator for a coin or auction is worthwhile and provenance is something you want to be looking out for.

There are many coin auction sites out there but the ones I would most typically use are: www.biddr.com or www.sixbid.com to stay abreast of upcoming auctions and auctions by Bertolami Fine Arts, Numismatik Naumann, Heritage Auctions, Roma Numismatics or Leu Numismatik. However, there are many others which also offer excellent service.

There are sites which consolidate many smaller and specialist vendors which can be interesting to browse, but I would recommend cultivating a relationship with the individual dealers before purchasing anything. Examples are www.ma-shops.com and www.vcoins.com. Vendors on these sites rely on their reputation to be able to trade and so will do all they can to avoid listing fake coins. However, the bottom line is that all of these services simply reduce the risk of ending up with a coin that is not genuine. Over time you will become sensitised to what a genuine ancient coin looks like, especially if it is one from an area you collect. Sometimes, a coin just does not 'feel right'. In those circumstances it is best to follow your instincts even if the coin is probably fine.

One other thing to be aware of is the practice of 'slabbing'. This is where a coin is graded and authenticated and then encased in a tamperproof case together with a label and serial number which identifies that exact coin. A slabbed coin provides a level of surety that the coin has been examined by an expert and so will have a high probability of being genuine. Of course, you will pay a premium for coins that are slabbed. Slabbing is mainly a practice found in the US. I, together with many others, share a distaste for retaining ancient coins in slabs. One of the joys of collecting these ancient coins is the ability to handle them and so gain a closer connection with their history. So, while I will buy slabbed coins, I subsequently 'free' them. However this is a personal choice.

Standards

Unlike modern coins where the coin simply represents a monetary value (also known as fait money), gold and silver coins in ancient Greece had a value directly linked to the weight of the respective metal. Each city state minted its coins on a specific standard which defined the weight of each coin, so a silver drachm in the Attic-Euboean standard should weigh 4.33g whereas a drachm in the Rhodian standard should weigh 3.90g. Each Standard will have a ‘base’ coin, sometimes but not always, the drachm. The Corinthian stater for example was the base coin for Corinth (8.60g) and was divided into three drachms (2.90g). Just to make things more complex, some standards reduced in weight over time.

Both William E Daehn’s article Contradictory Theories: Making Sense of Greek Coin Weight Standards and the Cambridge Core section Choosing and Changing Monetary Standards in the Greek World during the Archaic and the Classical Periods provide further detail on standards. Standards are important for the novice collector to understand as they allow you to determine if a coin is correct for the period and location; conversely it is a useful tool to determine the denomination of a coin that you may have. This is especially useful when looking at silver fractions.

A drachm is divided into six obols and each obol is further subdivided into four tetartemorion. So if you have a silver coin from Aegina (Aegetean standard) weighing 2.07g then you can be pretty sure it is a diobol (2 obols). The table below illustrates this:

Didrachm or stater 12.57 g

Drachm 6.28 g

Triobol (Hemidrachm) 3.11 g

Diobol 2.07 g

Trihemiobol 1.55 g

Obol 1.04 g

Hemiobol 0.52 g

Tetartemorion 0.26 g

Of course early coin manufacture can have some variation in weight (quality control issues), though in the main mints the weights are surprisingly consistent. You will also have weight loss through wear and tear and through the practice of ‘clipping’ where small pieces of the coin were removed (remember the value is in the weight of silver and a lot of small clippings would have been worth taking the trouble). In practice when buying a coin you can aim to remain within a narrow band of the expected standard weight until you get more experience with the coins of a particular city-state.

Bronze coinage had historically been used in Sicily, as explained by Oliver D Hoover "In Sicily, the weight standard was based on the local bronze litra. The litra was at first represented by a small silver coin weighing 0.86 g. This silver denomination, however, proved troublesome, since it was often confused with an obol, and was replaced with a bronze version, possibly as early as the mid-fifth century BC. The convenience of this bronze coin was immediately apparent and became widely used in the area. One of the earliest cities to strike the bronze litra was Himera, a city on Sicily’s north. Although the original bronze litrai were cumbersome to use, their weight was soon reduced to a more acceptable level for everyday circulation. These coins were accepted as a token currency, since their intrinsic value was considerably below their authorized circulating value. By the end of the fifth century BC, many of the Greek cities in Sicily had adopted this base-metal currency for small daily transactions. This was an important step in the development of a monetized economy and the use of fiat currency" [The Handbook of Greek Coinage Series]

The obol was divided into a number of bronze coins called chalkous. However the exact weight of a chalkous and the number of chalkoi in an obol varied from city to city. For example, in Athens one obol consisted of 8 chalkoi but in nearby Delphi and Epidaurus it was 12 chalkoi. It can therefore be very difficult to precisely define the bronze denomination you are looking at as the divisions are not known for all cities.

One thing to watch out for is that older collections and reference texts may sometimes express coin weights in grains rather than grams, where 1 grain = 0.0649 grams. Simple to convert and there are lots of online sites to do so such as UnitConverters.net.

Coin Research

While it is tempting just to jump in feet first and buy the first coin that interests you, researching any potential purchase really pays dividends. It allows you to understand whether the coin is typical of its type, understand a bit about its history and also understand the market value of the coin. Much of the joy in collecting ancient coins comes from learning about the city states and their history and connecting with those stories through the physical coin. Part of it is also the joy of the hunt; looking at alternatives and carefully weighing which coin interests you the most, best fits into or fills a gap in your collection and is most aesthetically pleasing (within your budget). For many years the standard reference for Greek coins was Greek Coins and their Values by David R. Sear but more recently in my opinion that has been superseded by the Handbook of Greek Coinage series by Oliver D. Hoover. This is a series of 13 volumes, each of which tackles a specific geography e.g. Handbook of Coins of Italy and Magna Graecia. If you are settled in your area of collecting, then the relevant volume(s) are invaluable as they provide a short history of the mint and the coin production before providing illustrations and descriptions of each coin.

For those who are interested specifically in the coins of Southern Italy the expert in the field is Colin Kraay. Earlier alternatives are the Coins of Magna Graecia by W. A. Hands and any of the texts of Sydney P Noe. Just be aware that some of the dates and interpretation have been overtaken by later discoveries. Please see My Library section for a full list of the texts I use. The following online resources either provide examples of coins that have been purchased or are more research based and provide more information on the cities, people and context for the coin.

Wildwinds is a great place to get images and descriptions of coins and is organised by city, region or ruler.
Not strictly coins but the Perseus Library is a great source for getting historical reference to Greek cities. So, if you want contemporary references to Aegina or Athens then this is the place to look. ToposText does something similar.
Although Forum Ancient Coins is an online shop, it is also a resource for coin history, maps etc and well worth a visit to get comparative coins even if you are not buying.
Coin Archives and acsearch.info are databases of coins featured in numismatic auctions.
Historia Numorum has detailed researched information on coins, cities, dynasts etc.
The American Numismatic Society also exposes a coin database ANS Mantis
Corpus Numorum is useful for detailed information on the coins of Thrace and Mysia.

Fake Coins

Unfortunately, it is fact that fake ancient coins, and by that I mean those that are of modern manufacture and intended to deceive, are becoming more common. The detail in these fakes is such that it often takes an expert in the specific series to spot them. There are some websites that publish information on circulating fakes (see Forum Ancient Coins as an example), however your best defence is to purchase coins from someone who would be able to spot and weed out any fakes. In practice this means going through a numismatic dealer. In some cases, dealers will offer a certificate of authenticity which should allow you to get a full refund if the coin is later identified as a fake. Most dealers survive on their reputation and so make every effort possible to avoid fakes. It should also be remembered that there are ancient fakes and rather than being a problem (as long as they are identified as such) they can be an interesting area for collecting.

One approach to getting around this issue has been taken by companies such as the Numismatic Guaranty Corporation (NGC). The approach is to authenticate a coin and then seal it in a tamper-proof container with a label of authenticity describing the coin and its grading. This is known as 'slabbing'. For high value coins this may be a route you want to take, just be aware that slabbed coins command a premium (the costs of authentication and slabbing have to be covered after all). Some collectors however prefer to display and handle their coins without the associated plastic and prefer un-slabbed coins, or indeed will buy a slabbed coin and de-slab it.

The best advise is to minimise the risks where you can, avoid where possible coins offered from new or unreliable sources, and just relax to enjoy your coins unworried by the fact that the world is not perfect.

One final thought is that coin collecting can be a very social affair and there are many numismatic clubs and societies where like-minded and expert people will be more than happy to offer advise and guidance. A list of numismatic societies in the UK can be found here BANS. You can also get opinions on Reddit r/ancientcoins.

Community Links

This site is offered as a community resource for Ancient Greek Coins. Other collectors also have sites which show off their personal collection and can often contain educational material. Indeed, much of the experience in ancient coins lies with these dedicated individuals who are happy to share their knowledge (if you just know where to look). This list is in no way exhaustive and will be extended as and when I come across such sites. Note that some sites may additionally offer coins for sale - listing here is not an endorsement of such coins.

Conservatori Ancient Coins is a new classical numismatic site from Curtis Jackson-Jacobs, including ancient coin & numismatic literature blog

Colosseo Collection is a private collection of the first millennium of ancient coins

Doug Smith's Ancient Coins covers a range of themes that are relevant to those collecting Greek or Roman coins

Tiff Collection Ancient Coins contains mages of Greek and Roman coins within a private collection

Artemis Collection has amongst the best images available of Greek and Roman coins including a searchable index and lots of in-depth research