I have been too busy with other things to post lately. Hope everyone is doing fine. In the comments section let me know what other numismatic blogs are worth reading.
As before, although the image looks OK without glasses you really want to use red/cyan 3D glasses to see this coin.
This enigmatic coinage was struck in India, 800-1300 AD. It's usually called “Gadhaiya Paisa”. I realize I know almost nothing about Indian coinage during this time. I have Michael Mitchiner's Indo-Greek and Indo-Scythian Coinage, covering coins up to the 4th century, but the rest of Indian coinage is a mystery to me until the British Raj period.
Is there a good book to get started with the mysterious pre-Islamic coins of India?
Last month I posted a bronze coin scanned this way and got no comments. I would be curious to know if any of my readers have tried looking at these images with 3d glasses. I have a bunch more scans, but I'm not going to post them if no one has the glasses.
Frank Holt, Lost World of the Golden King: In Search of Ancient Afghanistan (2012, 343 pages)
It's good! Holt retraces the development of Baktrian numismatics from the tetradrachm of Eukratides published in 1738 by Theophilus Siegfried Bayer to the present day. Holt's narrative is not a dry scholarly recap; he includes many stories including new research about the arrival of Eukratides' giant ancient coin on the European market.
This is a good approach. So little is known about ancient Baktria that there is no real story to tell. The second major idea of Lost World is a reminder of how much that we think we know about Hellenistic Baktria is now-discredited speculation. Holt's book will hopefully serve as a great "reboot" for the field of Baktrian studies.
Holt is critical of numismatic scholarship for continuing to focus the role coins play to uncover the ancient kings and battles. He believes that numismatics should move on, devising ways to deduce facts about ancient lifestyles. Statistical techniques are used to show technical errors on coins imply the coiners of ancient Ai Khanoum were probably stressed out as their civilization was dying.
The professor's critique of numismatic scholarship has some merit but he seems to paint numismatics with a single brush. So much of coin studies are done by or for collectors; it seems unfair to criticize the entire field for continuing to focus on kings.
Career academics probably do not need Holt's insights to revitalize the study of coins but perhaps collectors can consider forming interesting collections around topics other than lists of kings. People are starting to collect overstrikes. I know one advanced collector who has moved on to collecting coins made into tools and decorations in antiquity.
Recommended. Lost World of the Golden King: In Search of Ancient Afghanistan (Hellenistic Culture and Society)
This image was created using two scans on a flatbed scanner and Photoshop. Gimp can also be used. This is my first attempt at Anaglyph 3D coin photography. For the technique I credit Gerald Marks. Yesterday I attended a workshop conducted by Professor Marks at Observatory in Brooklyn.
They are marketing a CombiBar, a credit-card sized gold ingot that can easily be broken into 1g pieces to make change.
Teaming up with the Cook Islands, they have produced two varieties of CombiCoin, one that breaks into pure silver 1g coins denominated as Cook Island dimes, another that breaks into 10g pieces. The silver bars can be purchased for about $150.
Prosecuting, Colin McGregor alleged: “The defendant has spent in excess of £3,000 in order to create what is described as an ‘illicit mint’.” ... About 2,000 fake £1 coins were recovered, the court was told. Specialist officers also found a large amount of metal, as well as notepads allegedly with “stage by stage” instructions and diagrams showing how to make fake coins.We rarely think about what happens to modern counterfeits after they are seized. One man had an idea but his dream was denied by the UK's Royal Mint. Stephanie Cureton reports for the Wirral Globe that
Plans to build a sculpture made entirely out of fake coins used at Merseyside’s tunnel booths have been scrapped. Merseytravel asked the Royal Mint for their approval to commission a special piece of art made out of counterfeit £1 coins. ... Councillor Steve Foulkes, who is part of the committee, had said he was “sceptical” about the prospect of such a piece of art.Commenting on the newspaper's web site, a user identified only as Spiffy opined “no Turner prize for us.”
An architecture student pondered the design of a clubhouse for numismatists in New York. In various entries he (or she?) visits the NY Fed, the ANS, and reads about the New York Numismatic Club. The student proposes a building shaped like a giant coin cabinet perched atop a pole.
