By Mike Markowitz for CoinWeek ….. No lonelier man ever occupied the Byzantine throne – or any other, for that matter. Basil was ugly, dirty, coarse, boorish, totally philistine and almost pathologically mean. He was, in short, profoundly un-Byzantine. And all these things, one suspects, he would have readily admitted. He was not concerned with […]
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By Michael T. Shutterly for CoinWeek ….. On September 2, 31 BCE, a great fleet under the command of Octavian, the great-nephew and posthumously adopted son of Julius Caesar, faced the fleets of Caesar’s former close companions Mark Antony and Cleopatra VII at the Battle of Actium. Octavian (or rather, Octavian’s friend Marcus Agrippa) won […]
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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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CoinWeek Ancient Coin Series by Mike Markowitz ….. MOST ANCIENT PEOPLE lived close to nature. Long before they built temples of stone, they worshipped their gods in sacred groves[1]. Greeks myths describe trees inhabited by supernatural spirits called dryads[2], who could take the form of beautiful young women. The ancient Mediterranean world was a much […]
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CoinWeek Ancient Coin Series by Mike Markowitz ….. THE HIGHEST PRAISE THAT one ancient coin collector can give another is to say he or she “has an eye for coins.” Someone with this remarkable ability can look at a tray of a hundred nearly identical pieces and unerringly pick out the three or four best […]
The post So You Want to Be a Classical Numismatist? Ancient Coins for Beginners appeared first on CoinWeek.
Gold coins of Roman Emperor Theodosius II, who ruled between CE 402 and 450, are not necessarily rare, but when one of these coins is found in what is today Israel, that is another story.
On July 3 Fox News and other news agencies reported the find of a gold solidus in the Galilee region by a group of Israeli students. Further details of the context in which the coin was found were not available at the time this article was being written
CoinWeek Ancient Coin Series on Ancient Counterfeiters by Mike Markowitz …. The best advice this or any other coin collector ever got is, “Buy the book before you buy the coin.” For beginning collectors of early and modern American coins, the choice of reference books is simple. If you have The Official Red Book®, you’re probably good to go. With […]
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By Mike Markowitz for CoinWeek …. “To declare that a forged coin is genuine is a mistake, but to declare that a genuine coin is a forgery is a crime.” –Leo Mildenberg (1913 – 2001)[1] FOR CLASSICAL NUMISMATISTS any discussion of fake ancient coins is… a delicate subject. Dealers worry that fear of fakes […]
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By Mike Markowitz for CoinWeek …. “To declare that a forged coin is genuine is a mistake, but to declare that a genuine coin is a forgery is a crime.” –Leo Mildenberg (1913 – 2001)[1] FOR CLASSICAL NUMISMATISTS any discussion of fake ancient coins is… a delicate subject. Dealers worry that fear of fakes will […]
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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 […]
The post Philosopher King: The Coinage of Marcus Aurelius appeared first on CoinWeek.
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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