Category Archives: CoinArchives Pro

Jeff Garrett: What To Do When There Are No Price Guides

By Jeff Garrett for Numismatic Guaranty Corporation (NGC) …… Establishing the value of a rare coin is one of the basic requirements for being a professional coin dealer. Most use the usual price guides, such as the Greysheet or the Red Book, auction records, grading service price guides, population reports, and many other pricing tools. […]

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The Hole Truth: Ancient Coins That Were Pierced

CoinWeek Ancient Coin Series by Mike Markowitz ….. Don’t buy damaged coins. They will be impossible to sell. This was some of the best advice I ever got from an experienced collector of ancients. But like most things in classical numismatics, there are exceptions. Ancient coins were sometimes pierced with a hole, to be worn […]

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Online Resources for Researching Ancient Coins

CoinWeek Ancient Coin Series by Mike Markowitz ….. For many collectors of classic and modern American coins, the only information resource they need is the old, reliable “Red Book”, which will mark its 75th anniversary in 2022. Collectors of ancient coins, however, face a problem that is considerably more complex. With thousands of types issued […]

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The Coinage of Rhegium

CoinWeek Ancient Coin Series by Mike Markowitz for CoinWeek ….. FOR CENTURIES, THE narrow Strait of Messina that separates Sicily from the toe of Italy has been a crossroads of history. The town of Rhegium[1] (or Rhegion, today Reggio di Calabria) located on the Italian side of the Strait, was one of the first Greek […]

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CoinWeek Ancient Coin Series: Coins of the Visigoths in Spain

  Visigoths in Spain By Mike Markowitz for CoinWeek ….. …[T]he history of the Visigothic kingdom is one long struggle between the nobility and the monarchy. The kings were supported by the clergy in their efforts to consolidate the royal power and transmit it from father to son, while the nobles strove to keep it […]

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Bad Money – Ancient Counterfeiters and Their Fake Coins

CoinWeek Ancient Coin Series on Ancient Counterfeiters by Mike Markowitz …. Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur “The world wants to be deceived, so let it be deceived.” — attributed to Petronius, 1st-century Roman satirist AROUND 650 BCE, on the eastern shore of the Aegean Sea, coinage was invented. Very soon afterward, Ancient Counterfeiters and their counterfeit […]

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CoinWeek Ancient Coin Series – Mark Antony’s Legionary Denarius

By Mike Markowitz for CoinWeek …. Those very things that procured him ill repute bear witness to his greatness… Antony was thought disgraced by his marriage with Cleopatra, a queen superior in power and glory … to all who were kings in her time. Antony was so great as to be thought by others worthy […]

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The Star and Crescent on Ancient Coins

CoinWeek Ancient Coin Series by Mike Markowitz …. OUR MOON IS SOLID, not transparent. So it is impossible for a star to appear between the points of a crescent moon. But ancient artists did not care about this, even if they understood it. Because the orbits of the Earth, the Moon and the planets all […]

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Dogs on Ancient Coins

  CoinWeek Ancient Coin Series by Mike Markowitz …. You ain’t nothing but a hound dog, crying all the time. You ain’t nothing but a hound dog, crying all the time. You ain’t never caught a rabbit, and you ain’t no friend of mine. –Elvis Presley, 20th-century American philosopher, covering Big Mama Thornton’s “Hound Dog” […]

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World Coins – A History of the Netherlands Gold Ducat, Part 3: The Importance of Primary Research in Numismatics

By Dariusz F. Jasek ….. Link to Part 1 | Part 2 The idea of this article is not to discredit other authors or publications mentioned here. However, without pointing out certain examples it would be impossible to explain how important it is to do primary research in numismatics. Of course, some mistakes are inevitable […]

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Teen Weirdo Emperor: The Coinage of Elagabalus

CoinWeek Ancient Coin Series by Mike Markowitz ….   …[To] sport with the passions and prejudices of his subjects, and to subvert every law of nature and decency, were in the number of his most delicious amusements. A long train of concubines, and a rapid succession of wives, among whom was a vestal virgin, ravished […]

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CoinWeek Ancient Coin Series: Sphinxes on Ancient Coins

The business of a sphinx is to be mysterious By Mike Markowitz for CoinWeek ….   …somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs…[1] — W. B. Yeats, “The Second Coming” (1920) IN […]

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Philosopher King: The Coinage of Marcus Aurelius

CoinWeek Ancient Coin Series by Mike Markowitz …. Begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with the busy-body, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial. All these things happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good and evil. –The Meditations, 2:1 OF ALL THE ROMAN EMPERORS, Marcus Aurelius comes […]

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CoinWeek Ancient Coin Series: Two Heads Are Better Than One

By Mike Markowitz for CoinWeek …. THE RICH VOCABULARY OF NUMISMATICS has many terms to describe the things we see on coins. When a coin depicts two heads side by side, the usual description is “jugate busts”. The word derives from the Latin iuga, meaning “yoke”. Think of a pair of oxen yoked together. Jugate […]

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CoinWeek Ancient Coin Series: Coinage of the Merovingians

By Mike Markowitz for CoinWeek …. The Franks had little idea of the state as a public institution, and the regnum Francorum (kingdom of the Franks), while remaining a family inheritance, was inherited according to the rules of private law, divided on each occasion between the sons or nearest male relatives of the deceased (Grierson […]

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CoinWeek Ancient Coin Series: Coinage of the Merovingians

By Mike Markowitz for CoinWeek ….   The Franks had little idea of the state as a public institution, and the regnum Francorum (kingdom of the Franks), while remaining a family inheritance, was inherited according to the rules of private law, divided on each occasion between the sons or nearest male relatives of the deceased […]

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Bad Money: Ancient Counterfeiters and Their Coins

CoinWeek Ancient Coin Series by Mike Markowitz…. Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur “The world wants to be deceived, so let it be deceived.” — attributed to Petronius, 1st-century Roman satirist AROUND 650 BCE, on the eastern shore of the Aegean Sea, coinage was invented. Very soon afterward, counterfeit coinage appeared, and it has been with […]

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Coinage of Kyrene: A Greek City in Libya

CoinWeek Ancient Coin Series by Mike Markowitz…. THE JEBEL AKHDAR OR “GREEN MOUNTAINS” OF LIBYA stretches eastward from Benghazi for a hundred miles (160 km) along the coast. With an average annual rainfall of 15-20 inches (375-500 mm), these limestone hills are the most forested region in North Africa. In ancient times, before centuries of […]

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NGC Ancients: CoinArchives — Premium Research Tool for Ancient Coins

By David Vagi, Director of NGC Ancients…. NGC offers premium access to an incomparable online resource that allows you to search through ancient coin auction prices realized and upcoming auctions from more than 80 auction firms. Ancient coins have come a long way in the last 20 years. A large number of scholarly books have […]

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Those Darned Etruscans: Coins of the Rasna

CoinWeek Ancient Coin Series by Mike Markowitz… THE PEOPLE WHO LIVED IN TUSCANY before the Romans are often described as “enigmatic” or “mysterious.” We know them as “Etruscans”[1] from the name that the Romans called them; they called themselves “Rasna.” The last speakers of the Etruscan language probably died out in the first century of […]

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