Thoughts on digitization

This week's e-Sylum discusses digitization of numismatic literature. Wayne Homren asks if digitization will be a 'Godsend or Gomorrah'. Wayne is concerned that digitization may harm the value of private libraries. That's true if the perceived value of works is the value of the information contained within. Some coin collectors feel that way. (I feel that way.) Non-numismatic book collectors seem to feel otherwise. I see mad prices for first editions of Harry Potter ($10,000+!!!) and Hemingway even though modern editions have better type, better paper, etc.

I digitized Barclay Head's Historia Numorum. I suspect my action decreased the value of the reprints and increased the value of the best (1911) printing. That effect may be small. A bigger economic effect should be the result of the increased profile of the thousands of works cited therein. Historia Numorum often directs the reader to key papers in rare 19th century works. Those citations infect specialist collectors with a desire to read (and own) key works in their speciality.

If your collection is merely reprints of pre-1922 works I expect it's value to drop to $0.

Digitization may increase your enjoyment of the books you already own. I own a few rare 19th century editions of BMC Greek. When I open them, they make cracking sounds. Paper fragments fall off. I enjoy the fine plates, far superior to the reprint, but for reference I prefer to use Google Books to access them. Being able to 'Google' your own library is an underrated experience!

I was able to add a little value to Historia Numorum by adding hyperlinks. When Google gets more works scanned I will be able to hyperlink everything cited, in bulk. This will make the electronic version much more useful than the best paper edition. I have no idea if this will help or hurt the economic value of the first printing.

More important is the effects of digitization on the authoring of new works. Numismatics, especially ancient numismatics, is built upon the study of individual coins. The chronology comes from overstrikes and die links. To improve on the works of predecessors we must understand earlier works.

That isn't the case with, say, 'physics.' Physics is built up from a small number of key equations based on experiments that could be repeated today. Those experiments, along with the names of their discoverers, is all that is needed to write about physics. Coins are different. I can't just take a shovel and dig the restrikes and die links needed to rebuild the chronologies. It is considered bad form to propose new theories and new attributions for coins without reading earlier works. Easy digital access to the works that numismatics is built upon will allow more amateurs to theorize and write new works.

Coin photography under different lighting conditions

Voz has posted two denarius photos on ancients.info. The coins look like before-and-after-cleaning shots, but they are actually of the same coin, taken on the same day, under different lighting conditions.

ISEGRIM

I've written about ISEGRIM before. Now 'archivum' on FORVM has written Really Working with ISEGRIM. Worth reading!

Uncleaned coins, gold found

Derrick Fretwell has found two gold solidi of Carausius (286 AD). One is apparently unique.

ThisIsDerbyshire.co.uk has the details: “They are just the 24th and 25th gold coins from his reign that have ever been found, the last discovery being in 1975.”

Contextual Numismatics!

Wayne Sayles' recently blogged criticism of Nathan Elkins 2009 AIA panel on Contextual Numismatics in response to Elkin's call for papers on Contextual Numismatics.

Wayne has never heard of 'Contextual Numismatics', and neither has Google (regular or Book Search).

I also couldn't find anything on 'contextual numismatics' but given that this is an AIA conference I assume the phrase means applying the principals of contextual archaeology to numismatics. 'Contextual Archaeology' gets 2700 Google web hits and more importantly 306 hits on Google Book Search.

A History of Archaeological Thought by Bruce G. Trigger explains (p. 348) that Ian Hodder's contextual archaeology is a challenge to processual archaeology. “Basic to contextualism is Hodder's enthographically well-documented claim that material culture is not merely a reflection of ecological adaption or sociopolitical organization but also an active element in group relations that can be used to disguise as well as reflect social relations.”

Ian Hodder himself says (Reading the Past: Current Approaches to Interpretation in Archaeology, p. 156) “New developments in Marxist-influenced archaeology and social theory have lead to a more complete discussion of the role of agency in society, and a consideration of embodiment helps us understand how agents experience the world and hose they are formed as subjects in the world.”

As an outsider I can't make much of that!

Elkins seems to be bringing a message to archaeologists that coins should be studied as more than art objects or datable material objects. He wants to discuss what the ancients were consciously and unconsciously thinking about coins, using the genre techniques of anthropology, psychology, sociology, and maybe literary criticism.

Some numismatists study coins this way. For example, I've been thinking a lot lately about why many Greek cities used Medusa, a hideous monster, on their coinage. A search for 'propaganda' in the ANS library catalog gives 321 hits, mostly papers speculating on the meanings of images on ancient coinage. It is reasonable to want to gather cultural speculations on coins under an academic umbrella and encourage students to make it their field.

I think it would be great if anthropologists and psychologists started writing books on numismatic iconography (both ancient and modern.)

Elkin's use of the phrase 'critical study', and the highly academic vocabulary of the Call For Papers suggest he wants to encourage authors from the humanities. I wish Contextual Numismatics success as a sub-field but hope that its adherents encourage a style of writing accessible to numismatists and undergraduates. I find the language used by literary folks hard to understand. The stuff I read on Contextual Archaeology this morning called to mind a famous somewhat-satirical essay How to Deconstruct Almost Anything by Chip Morningstar. Morningstar makes the point that academics in the humanities write for each other, not for general audiences.

Recipe for convincing fake gold bars

Theo Gray tells PopSci.com How to make convincing fake-gold bars. He's never actually done it. He believes his recipe is more difficult to detect than the fake gold bars in Ethiopia's central bank.

(Anyone interested in gold bars should visit the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Reservations are required to be let into the gold vault. If you don't have reservations it's still worth a visit for the ANS coin exhibits. Visitors receive some odd numismatic-related publications, like these free comic books.)

Greatest comic book collection

(via boingboing)

Comic book dealer Chuck Rozanski has written a 17-part series on his 1977 purchase of the greatest collection of golden age comic books. He essentially rescued them from the collector's heirs who threw away some and would have thrown away the rest.

This tale has nothing to do with coins, computers, or numismatic literature. I am bringing it to your attention because it has a lot of insights about collecting, dealing collectables, and what your heirs are going to do to your collection. One amusing tidbit is that Mr. Rozanski was aparently the first person to realize that mint condition comic books from the 1930s, perhaps finest known example and unique in mint, were worth more than 2x the price well-used copy. He started charging 4x or 5x the price of a reading copy. Many collectors hated him for it and he lost friends over it.

New online article by Prokopov

Steel Matrixes from 'Demitrovgrad Studio' on FORVM Ancient Coins website.

Coin Forgeries and Replicas 2006 by Ilya Prokopov

Published in 2007, in Bulgaria, text in English. $20 + $8 shipping from SP-P Publishing House.

78 pages on good paper. The photographs are good quality and many are enlarged.

• 41 Greek coins (3 AE, 4 gold, the rest silver)
  +110 Histiaia tetrobols
  
• 1 Celtic imitation of Phillip II
  
• 2 Roman Republican (1 gold)
  
• 25 Roman coins (6 AE, 9 gold, 10 silver)
  
• 2 Byzantine coins
  
• 17 'Mandev studio' coins (8 Greek, 1 Bosporos kingdom, 7 Roman, 1 medieval)
  
• 6 antiquities

The six page Introduction mostly describes large pseudo-hoards of fake tetradrachms and Republican denarii arriving on the market. (These hoards aren't in this book.) There are three pages on the Mandev studio. The rest of the book is a catalog of fakes. Some of the fakes get a paragraph describing their manufacture or patina.

The coins are divided into three sections. The first section contains all coins except the Mandev and Histiaia fakes. The second section is the Mandev studio coins. The third is the tetrobols.

The Histiaia coins are all shown life size and with an accompanying enlargement. Only 18 non-Histiaia coins are enlarged. The enlargements are on three separate pages far from the life sized image the description. I would have preferred to see the enlargements next to the life size photo and description. The same glossy paper is used throughout so there is no benefit to forcing the reader to flip around for enlargements.

Putting the Mandev coins into their own section makes sense because seeing them together helps the expert develop an eye for the Mandev style. It also makes it harder to find particular coins. I would have preferred to see the Mandev coins mixed in with the other fakes AND shown together, as enlargements, in a separate Mendev section.

Recommended and a bargain at $28 postpaid.

Counterfeit Studios and Their Coins by Ilya Prokopov

Counterfeit Studios and Their Coins by Ilya Prokopov and Ruman Manov
Published in 2005, in Bulgaria, text in English. $20 + $8 shipping from the publisher SP-P. Some coin dealers stock it.

CS&TS is highly recommended.

The book is 88 pages long and covers:

55 Greek coins (2 electrum, 2 gold, 40 silver, 4 more 'low quality', 7 more suspect silver and a suspect fourree)
2 Roman Republican
44 Roman (6 gold, 8 AE, 9 silver, 12 more silver, 5 more AE, 2 more silver, a gold, and a billon copy of a gold, one more suspect)
3 Roman Provincial

Besides the catalog of fakes there is a good short introduction to types of counterfeits, seven pages on diagnostics, and seven pages on the technical characteristics of seven forgery 'studios' producing fakes.

The chapter on diagnostics is appreciated. Prokopov discusses what to look for when examining surfaces with the microscope or magnifier and a bit about learning to detect fakes by feeling them. He even discusses smell!

The diagnostics chapter is a good start but doesn't make the reader an expert. This kind of material can't be learned from books. For example, Prokopov suggests touching genuine coins and learning the 'very specific odour' they give off. It is probably good that he doesn't try to name or describe the odor! Wine experts try to describe the smell of fine wines and even though they've had centuries to develop specialized vocabulary their wine descriptions aren't helpful to beginners. Numismatists shouldn't imitiate wine writers or encourage readers to become overconfident.

The chapter on forgery studios discusses the striking technique and patinas of their fakes. Expect technical detail here as little is known (or can be revealed?) about the forgers themselves. The studios are merely identified by the name of their city or region.

The photographs are good, printed well on glossy paper, and there are blowups of some coins at the end.

What I found annoying about the book is the organization. The first section of coins discusses the good fakes. Next come the low-quality fakes from Ruman Manov's collection. The final section is suspected fakes.

Within each section the organization is good--Greek geographically then Roman chronologically. The problem is the three main categories. That ordering works well when reading. When using the book as a reference against specific fakes it is difficult to remember if a particular fake type was one of the low-quality fakes of Manov, or is only strongly suspected of being fake, or is in another similar volume by Prokopov! I crave an index to the series.

This book is a great bargain at $28 if it warns you away from a single fake. Highly recommended.

ANS booksale: journals

The ANS Duplicate Book Sale page now lists offered journals. There are only four titles, but long runs of them: Spink's Numismatic Circular, Seaby's Coin and Medal Bulletin, Coin Hoards, and Numismatist. The dates of the walk in sales, starting next Saturday, are also up.

Why let your ideas die with you?

Some web site is encouraging people to donate their copyrights to society at death.

The bizarre ancient coin videos of Gregory Zorzos

Strange ancient coins by Gregory Zorzos

Coins with Sphinx by Gregory Zorzos

Coins of Alexander the Great Vol 4 by Gregory Zorzos

Coins of the Seleucid Kings by Gregory Zorzos

The ancient Macedonian coins, the Greek letters and the lies

etc, etc, etc...

How people count cash

A video by Samimy Various Films on MetaCafe show styles of currency counting around the world.

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1098393/how_people_count_cash/

I count money in the US/Canada/UK style. I was unaware that it was a cultural thing; I assumed everyone counted money like me.

Online Mionnet

Archivum on FORVM has collected links to a complete readable Mionnet set.

http://www.forumancientcoins.com/board/index.php?topic=34502.msg276362#msg276362.

Mionnet describes all the ancient Greek and Provincial coins he knows, and gives them values (in francs, in the early 19th century). The series is insanely detailed, 7000 or 9000 pages, and includes a lot of coins and inscriptions you won't see online elsewhere.

ANS sale of duplicate catalogs

The ANS sale continues. Updated PDFs have been posted with sold-out titles removed. The NFA catalogs I was hoping for were already gone although I bid Saturday, before the announcement hit the e-Sylum.

I did catch a complete or near-complete set of Bankhaus H. Aufhauser/Hauck & Aufhauser catalogs.

If, like me, you are interested in the catalogs for their research value I'd like to remind you of Warren Esty's ancient coin auction catalog site. This site tells how many ancient coins are in each catalog, how good the coins are, and breaks the counts down into Greek, Roman, Byzantine, etc.

I also recommend collectors of Greek coins visit Kolbe 105 catalog for the essays recommending the catalogs of various firms. Most of the firms recommended by Dr. Koppersmith have already sold in the ANS sale.

Advertising-supported eBooks

TeleRead has an interesting post about Wowio royalties.

Wowio is a company that gives away e-Books of recent titles. They can do this because they add advertising. (I haven't actually downloaded any of their titles myself.) No numismatic titles, but I did see a free children's book on ancient Greek science and technology. Amazon sells the same book for about $12 plus shipping.

$2 auction catalogs

The American Numismatic Society is selling duplicates in preparation for the move. The catalogs for the first part of this sale are now online.

The ANS is charging $2 per title! That is a pretty good price for some of these titles, like The Garrett Collection, which regularly sell on eBay for much more.

The catalog of US dealer catalogs is 28 pages. The non-US dealer catalog is 97 pages. These catalogs were put together in haste, and some US dealers like Freeman & Sear appear in the non-US list. So check both.

Some of the catalogs go back to the '50s but must seem to be from the '80s and '90s.

I was surprised to see Numismatic Fine Arts catalog in the sale. Retiring librarian Campbell kept the library's good copies in the Rare Book Room. He would get particular auctions if asked... but there was no browsing. For that reason, I've never seen a real NFA catalog! It used to bug me that Mionnet's own copy of Mionnet (1806-1837), with his hand-annotations, was in the open stacks — but recent NFA catalogs were in the rare book room.

I sent in an order for the NFA catalogs (but not the fixed price lists...)

Notes on Kolbe 105

The downloadable catalog is a “SECURED” PDF! Printing the catalog is allowed, but selecting text, copying it to the clipboard, and pasting it into another document is disabled. For example, pasting information about particular lots into a blog is not allowed.

(DRM is irritating. For historical sciences like numismatics it's especially painful because so much depends upon what has been said before.)

Lot 29 was a surprise to me. It's a CD-ROM of the Library catalogue of British and Royal Numismatic Societies. I wasn't aware of this title, although The ANS library has a copy (in the multi-media section — also new to me). The ANS entry implies the disks were a suppliment to the 2003 Numismatic Chronical.

Catalog 105 follows the usual Kolbe format of being first divided into consigners, then arranged alphabetically by author within each consignment. I don't understand the arrangement; I'd prefer to see it first arranged by subject. So ancient coin books can be found in lots 1-447, and also 582-623. Perhaps this is a good arrangement for future scholars tracing back ownership of books?

Kolbe auction 105

George F. Kolbe's Auction 105 catalog is now up.

715 lots, with emphasis on works on ancient Greek coins. Also included is an essay on collecting books on Archaic and Classical Greek coins by Daniel L. Koppersmith.

Dear JSTOR

The Stingy Scholar asks Dear JSTOR: Why won't you let me in?.

Elsen 243

Jean Elsen list 243 is online and includes 315 ancients and over 500 medieval coins. Also offered are nearly 200 numismatic books which were not included in the printed catalog.

Copyright law should distinguish between commercial and cultural uses

Cory Doctorow proposes in today's Guardian Unlimited that “Copyright law should distinguish between commercial and cultural uses”.

e-Book on counterfeits by Prokopov

Ilya Prokopov's new book, Coin Forgeries and Replicas 2007, is only available as an e-Book.

This book is as good, or better, than previous books in the series. The other books cost $20 plus $8 in postage. The e-Book is only $9. The publisher is SP-P & Provias.

After purchasing the book (with Paypal), an email arrives with a one-time URL. The buyer is expected to use the browser to save the URL rather than opening it. This produces a 48MB .PDF file. There is no troublesome DRM on this file. You should have no problem printing the book or copying it to a CD-ROM. Obviously, please don't make copies for your friends — $9 is a pretty good price for Dr. Prokopov's hard work. This is an eighty page book!

The book covers

• 72 Greek coins (2 are gold, 1 AE, the rest silver)
  
• 8 Roman Republican
  
• 66 Roman (silver, AE, and gold)
  

In most, but not all cases, the coins are high-resolution and easy to see. There are a few nice blow-ups. Unfortunately, a few coins only have tiny, low-resolution images. It is explained that these were made “under urgent conditions”. Dr. Prokopov is documenting a criminal enterprise and sometimes it is difficult to get the criminals to cooperate!

For many of the coins Prokopov identifies the forgery “studio”. If he knows he describes the manufacture and patinating process used by the forger. There is a lot of interesting stuff here, much of which was new to me. I found a group of Roman Republican fakes the most interesting. The forger made porous casts then partially silver plated them. From a distance, it looks a lot like genuine “crystalization”.

Prokopov's English is easily readible. There are a few minor spelling errors and unexpected word choices. These minor defects are not important. This is an important work and highly recommended.

Charles Davis to auction ANS book duplicates

Charles Davis will be auctioning duplicates from the American Numismatic Society Febuary 2nd. 682 lots, including 342 lots of works on ancient coins. A PDF of the printed catalog is online.

The printed catalogs arrived a few weeks ago. Charles Davis doesn't send email notices or post to mailing lists and if I hadn't gotten a printed catalog I wouldn't have noticed the sale.

Dritto, a symbol for 'Obverse'

We've previously discussed numismatic symbols meaning 'reverse'.



Francesco Gnecchi's Monete romane: Manuale elementare comp (1896), in Italian, provides on pages 9-11 lists of Italian, French, English, and German numismatic abbreviations and symbols with corresponding meanings in Italian.

He includes the symbol that resembles the Prescription sign, ℞, which he considers Italian and English. His symbol has a wild look: the crossbar is curved and nearly as big as the R.

Gnecchi also includes a symbol I haven't seen before, resembling a D with a large tilde through it, which he defines as 'Dritto'.

I have never encountered this Dritto symbol. However, I don't read Italian books on numismatics. If you have seen this symbol elsewhere, please post a comment.

The Zero Rupee Note

From the mutiny.in blog, The Zero Rupee Note.

DRM is bad

DRM, or Digital Rights Management, is technologies that allow publishers to control how video and e-books are used. For example, publishers can assign passwords, or prevent printing, or prevent copying paragraphs to the clipboard for pasting into book reports.

DRM is bad for purchasers because it is complex and error-prone. Publishers say it is a good deal from consumers, claiming the restriction prevents pirates from bootlegging copies, thus allowing the publishers to sell for lower prices. As e-books and song downloads cost nearly as much as buying hardcovers and CDs, this claim seems dubious.

With DRM, you effectively have the material but the ability to read it is stored online. One of the biggest dangers of DRM is that problems with the publisher will lock you out of media you've paid for! This happened recently when Major League Baseball cut off access for fans who had bought videos of baseball games.

Almost no one likes DRM. So it was surprising to see Kevin Barry and Zachary 'Beast' Beasley promoting it in their January 2008 Celator column, The Internet Connection. They write “We firmly believe that authors and publishers should be paid for their efforts, and DRM is particularly important for niche markets such as ancient coin reference books.”

There is a bit of irony here. The Celator doesn't pay. I doubt Barry and Beasley got paid to write that authors should be paid. Barry and Beasley write about the Internet, a medium where almost no one gets paid.

Most numismatic books lose money. Folks mostly write because they love to share their knowledge. It would be great if writers got paid more than, say, coin dealers. This doesn't happen. Making it harder to buy an e-book hurts writers.

The ANS library is worth a visit. They have 18th century numismatic books in open stacks. I have looked at these books. They still work. I don't get an error opening up an Eckhel or Mionnet tome because the publisher is out-of-business and my password didn't handle Y2k, or Y1800, or Latin becomming a dead language. If numismatic books get DRM-ed, then book buyers will get screwed just like baseball fans.

I'm not saying this because I'm a pirate. I don't copy books that are in-print, and I try hard to avoid copying out-of-print books. I prefer books to coins, and returned from the NY International show without any new coins but with three new books. I'm saying this as a friend. Avoid DRM.

I did purchase a DRM-ed numismatic book once, Barclay Head's BMC Ionia. Even though I paid, and had a password, my computer wasn't compatible. I downloaded a free program to bypass the DRM. I had to waste a lot of time. The 'publisher' didn't send a cent to Barclay Head. Not because he's been dead for 90 years, but because the book is in the public domain.

Barry and Beasley don't mention numismatic e-books, except to say Spink has no plans to publish any. A title that looks interesting is from Krause — 2008 Standard Catalog of World Coins 3 DVD Set. This is the Krause books 1801-1900, 1901-2000 and 2001-Present. I saw the box at the Krause booth at the NY International show last week but haven't used the product or seen it demonstrated. George Cuhaj confirmed the illustrations are black and white.

Gerhard Hirsch Nachfolger 254-255

The catalog for the Gerhard Hirsch Nachfolger auction arrived today. It's also online. 700+ ancient coins, plus many antiquities, medieval, and modern coins.

Detecting counterfeits

The Kansas City Star has an article about counterfeit $100 bills. It features a great picture of four 'craftworkers' examining an enlargement of the bill.

MA-Shops

I saw a demonstration of MA-Shops at NYINC today. It is a European competitor to VCoins. Supposedly there are 120,000 items for sale on it already. I see 1350 ancient Greek coins, 3082 Romans, and 213 Byzantine. 922 Medieval. A lot of modern coins, especially German. About 500 numismatic books.

I like MA-Shops' ability to view by category. I think that's better than VCoins, which has per-store categories but no overall. The downside of MA-Shops is the search functions. It doesn't support wildcard searching (*). It doesn't support automatic synonym searching. Those features what makes VCoins great, and they are needed even more on MA-Shops because a lot of the descriptive text on the site isn't in English. This means a lot of searching for the same term in various languages.

Wetterstrom bans Wikipedia

Last July's issue of The Celator contains an editorial from Kerry Wetterstrom. Kerry has decided he can no longer accept articles that reference Wikipedia.

Kerry won't accept articles citing Wikipedia because 1) “trolls” are creating deliberate falsehoods in it, 2) Universities are banning the site and 3) An excellent Celator submission had errors in rulers dates and the source was Wikipedia.

I was working on a long rant against Kerry's policy, but instead of posting it I went to Wikipedia and updated the entry for Polyxenios and pointed out a problem with a Bopearachchi citation on the discussion page for Menander I.

I wish Kerry's editorial told us the names of the rulers with incorrect dates. I am currently interested in Polyxenios, but it probably wasn't him! Kerry's advice for getting information that is good enough for The Celator is to “... visit your local library, as they usually have the basic historical references.”

The only (modern) book I have that mentions Polyxenios is Sylloge Nummorum Graecorum: American Numismatic Society, part 9, Graeco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek Coins (1998) which places him circa 100 BC, presumably based merely on his coin sharing monograms with slighly less dubious Baktrian dynasts. Bopearachchi doesn't mention that R.C. Senior disagrees with him. I don't have Senior's books and don't know if he says why he disagrees with Bopearachchi.

Errors in regnal dates don't bother me. A good article on Polyxenious' coinage would still be good if the author followed Mr. Bopearachchi, Mr. Senior, or reported the disagreement when dating the coins. Kerry should re-consider. However, authors should also consider that citing Wikipedia makes them look kinda dumb. It is better to obtain the books and articles cited in the ===References=== section of the Wikipedia article and see what the experts actually said!

Egypt retroactively copyrights antiquities

The BBC is reporting that Egypt is expected to pass a law granting copyright status to full-scale replicas of any object in any museum in Egypt. The copyright holder will apparently be Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities.

Although Zahi Hawass told the BBC that the new law will apply to all countries, this seems unlikely. International copyright law is based on the Berne Convention. Article 18 says that the Convention only applies to works which were not in public domain when the treaty came into force. So new laws retroactively copyrighting the pyramid will not work. But suppose that Iraq, which is currently not a signer of Berne, got its act together and joined the WTO. It would have to respect the laws in place at signing, including this odd new Egyptian law.

I'm not a lawyer, and perhaps some other law or treaty would make this enforceable in the US.

I think this is a silly law, but Egypt has not asked my opinion. I suspect it would apply to replicas of any coins in any museum in Egypt. (It seems like it would be easy to get around it, by making 99% or 101% scale copies.)

Google Book Search (by subject)

Google Book Search has a new (or new to me) 'subject' advanced search option.

There are 72 full-text books for subject 'coins', 123 for subject 'coins, greek', 132 for subject 'coins, roman' and 32 for for 'coins, ancient'.

'coins, american' yields only 1 full-view title, Catalogue of John W. Haseltine's Type Table of U.S. Dollars, Half Dollars & Quarter Dollars, also Many Other Rare and Fine Coins ..., a Bangs & Company auction from November 28-30, 1881

The quotes are important if you enter the comma. A search for coins, american yields 0 hits. coins american and "coins, american" both yield titles.

Although there is only one full-view American title, there are 4 with limited previews and 600+ searchable 'snippet view' titles.

Alex Malloy numismatic library auction

Malter Galleries will be auctioning the Alex G. Malloy library on January 12-13th.

The auction is not part of the New York International but is being held across the street during the coin show. It will also be possible to bid live on eBay.

Part 2 is 1568 lots of numismatic literature, mostly on ancients (there are only three lots on US coins). There is also a Part 1, 739 lots of books on antiquities, ancient art, and archeology.

There is a full page add in December's The Celator.

There might be some bargains. The books will be sold without reserves or minimums. Interestingly, the catalog doesn't describe the condition of the books. There will be new preview at NYINC. Instead, “Preview books will be only at a New Jersey home, about 1 hour outside of NYC. Preview will begin 2 weeks prior to the auction”

NYINC

The NYINC web site is up. There will be six auctions.

In case you haven't noticed, sixbid.com has a new look. Links to the NYINC Triton XI and Gemini IV auctions are there. The Gemini catalog includes 72 brockages from the Marc Melcher Brockage Collection.

The catalog for the Baldwin/Markov/M&M “New York Sale” is also up.

Pravda uses photo from Ancient Coins Canada

When I was growing up we were terrified of the Soviet Union's hydrogen bombs. The official Soviet newspaper was Pravda. We were worried when American newspapers reported angry talk from Russian leaders in Pravda.

Pravda now has a web site, and on the web site is a report of the arrest of a 70-year-old barber. He was arrested in Greece for possession of ancient coins without a license (a license is needed to collect in Greece).

http://english.pravda.ru/news/world/03-12-2007/102135-Greece_coins-0

The barber had 2,300 Hellenistic and Roman bronze coins. Pravda, the mighty former mouthpiece of the Kremlin, wanted to illustrate the Associated Press story. Pravda's editors didn't have a photo of the barber's collection or even a good stock photo of Roman bronzes from the Hermitage collection. They illustrated, with credit, an uncleaned lot offered by VCoins dealer Ancient Coins Canada.

The lot can be seen at http://www.ancientcoins.ca/uncleaned.html. Lot #unclgreek — uncleaned Greek coins for $6.50 each. Your chance to own a coin published in Pravda!

Islamic coins recovered in Iraq

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/12/world/middleeast/12iraq.html

The New York Times, in a story on the Iraqi museum, reports tomorrow that “... directors have managed to recover 4,000 missing pieces, among them gems, Islamic coins and carved stones.”

It has been firmly established that there were no coins in the 15,000 stolen items. So how were coins recovered?

...recovery picked up as word spread that rewards were offered for items returned.

I'm glad that the museum is acquiring more coins for its collection. I am irritated that the Times continues to imply that coins were looted from the museum.

80,000 Reagan artefacts missing from museum

(This is a month old, and has nothing to do with coins.)

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/news/story/0,,2208145,00.html

The Guardian is reporting that 80,000 pieces in the collection of 100,000 items at the Reagan library are missing.

After antiquities thefts at Turkish museums there was chatter in the press that Turks were especially bad at museum security. Turns out things are not much better in California.

(via Art Law News)

FBI seizes two tons of Ron Paul dollars

The RabidQuill reports:

I sincerely regret to inform you that about 8:00 this morning a dozen FBI and Secret Service agents raided the Liberty Dollar office in Evansville.

For approximately six hours they took all the gold, all the silver, all the platinum and almost two tons of Ron Paul Dollars that where (sic) just delivered last Friday. They also took all the files, all the computers and froze our bank accounts.

Although the website offering the Ron Paul dollar is up, ordering does not work. There are a few left on eBay.

ANSMagazine.com

The ANS has placed the entire contents of their magazine online.

As an ANS volunteer, I did the design and HTML for the site. The ANS supplies me with QuarkXPress files, and I convert them to HTML manually.

snible.org still down

Snible.org comes from LinuxWebHost.com, which depends on servers from Alabanza.com. Alabaza was acquired two months ago by NaviSite. NaviSite apparently laid off many of the folks who run the Baltimore data center where snible.org lived and were moving things to Andover Massachusettes because the lease on the Baltimore center was over.

Here is an article on what is happening: http://www.ipdemocracy.com/archives/2007/11/05/
Latest info from Alabanza at http://www.navisite.com/sublevel.aspx?id=2017

According to a post on webhostingtalk.com, 175,000 web site are down because NaviSite fouled this move.

They tried to move a few weeks ago, sites were down for maybe an hour, and they rolled back the move. They got a lot of flack for failing the move, so this time when they had problems they just decided to work through it.

Apparently direct customers of Andover are getting a couple of uniformative messages a day about the problem. I've heard nothing from LinuxWebHost.com. I called them and they now just tell me to watch for updates on Alabanza.com

Supposedly 30 techs are working on this problem, although another source says over 100.

snible.org down

My personal web site, and Historia Numorum host snible.org is down. This also means I'm not getting my email.

The problem is at my provider, linuxwebhost.com. This weekend they tried to move from Baltimore to Andover.

Sorry for the disruption. The Wiki version at NumisWiki is up. If you haven't visited NumisWiki before, there is some good stuff there, including articles on fakes by Ilya Prokopov. The most recent prevents some Apollonia Pontika fakes with rough surfaces.

Frank Robinson auction

I haven't been writing much lately. Sorry, loyal readers.

Frank Robinson Mail Bid Sale #70 up. 396 lots, closing November 6th. These auctions are often good for bargain hunting.

Gorny & Mosch auctions 159-162

Gorny & Mosch auctions 159-162 are online. 2500+ lots of ancients. Also Medieval, modern and Russion coins. Auctions to take place the second week of October.

fine art insect casings

(This is also unrelated to ancient coins. I thought pictures were worth sharing anyway.)

French artist Hubert Duprat has tricked an insect called the caddis fly into assembling something very much like jewelry. Photos can be seen in an article on Duprat in Cabinet magazine.

The artist puts the insects in aquariums containing gold and jewels instead of the usual nesting materials.

United States v. One Solid Gold Object in Form of a Rooster

(this has nothing to do with ancient coins)

A link on reddit.com lead me to Henry Mark Holzer's essay “How Americans Lost Their Right To Own Gold And Became Criminals in the Process”. It briefly describes court cases establishing FDR's seizure of gold.

I mention this because I really liked the case name United States v. One Solid Gold Object in Form of a Rooster. 208 F. Supp. 99 (D. Nev. 1962). Holzer describes the rooster as a “206 troy ounce, eighteen karat gold rooster—the symbol of a Nevada casino's 'Golden Rooster Room'”. That name really tickled me... US versus a gold rooster. A gold rooster!

Fall catalogs starting to appear

Paul-Francis Jacquier's 2007 list is up. 700+ coins, 300+ books. There is a lot of good stuff here. Jacquier's site isn't part of sixbid.com, so it is easy to miss. I would not be aware of him at all if I hadn't spotted one of his numismatic literature catalogs on a table at the NY International several years ago.

The Auktionen Meister & Sonntag catalog, auction 5, is up on Sixbid.com. September 19-20th. Ancient coins, also 100+ lots of literature.

CNG 76

CNG 76 is online.

It includes a half Athenian Dekadrachm.

A few years ago CNG started describing the Etrurian 'gorgon' coins as depicting Metus, the personification of Fear. I haven't noticed any other catalogers doing this. I wonder what lead to the change?

In Medusa: Solving the Mystery of the Gorgon, Stephen Wilk theorizes some 'gorgons' might depict Fear and Dread, but he knows of no examples.

... there is no longer anything to buy in New York for 10 cents

San Francisco Chronicle story by Steve Rubenstein on the logistics of transporting a rare coin.

SNG Newcastle remaindered?

Sylloge Nummorum Graecorum Volume XIII: The Collection of the Society of Antiqaries, Newcastle Upon Tyne, $30.

48 B&W plates.

Color images of the coins can be found in the British SNG Database.

hobbyblog

Three weeks ago hobbyblog shut down.

It was the first ancient coin blog with regular content, and an old-timer when I started blogging.

hobbyblog posted one coin per day. The coins were often rare provincials. I visited hobbyblog a few times a week. It was a good blog.

I recently changed blogger templates and my blogroll went away. But hobbyblog was first on that list. The coins are all still there in the archives, there just aren't new posts.

Caron and Tilde

I know my readers are all hungry for information on the typographic symbol for the reverse of a coin. No luck yet.

Unrelated to coins, but today I was reading Known Anomalies in Unicode Character Names. It's a list of the mistakes the worlds smartest experts on alphabets made when writing down the names of the characters.

A note under 'Caron' (inverted hat on some Czech letters) says "The term 'caron' is suspected by some to be an invention of some early standards body, but it has also been claimed by others to have been in use at Linotype before the days of digital typography. Its true origin may be lost in the mists of time." By mists of time, they mean the 1980s! Wikipedia has details.

It reminded me of a similar story, the history of the tilde. The famous squiggle character, ~, which existed for hundreds of years in Spanish to indicate a different n and is on every keyboard, was only born in 1963! It is not much older than I.

Jean Elsen list 241

The catalog for Jean Elsen list 241 arrived in the mail yesterday.

400+ ancient coins, plus many medieval and modern, and numismatic books.

Podcast of Thom Bray interviewing Wayne Sayles

Thom Bray's Pieces of Time has a new 'podcast'. This one features Thom Bray interviewing Wayne Sayles.

The new podcast is 14 minutes long. I listened to it on my computer, but it can be downloaded to an iPod or MP3 player.

Short article on forgery detection by Ilya Prokopov

FORVM has a short article by Ilya Prokopov on detecting fakes struck with modern dies. It is well worth reading.

A brief discussion on FORVM's boards shows what might be a clever fake of a Greek coin detected using the technique.

Coin shortage in Assam

The BBC reported a few weeks ago that millions of Indian coins are being smuggled into neighbouring Bangladesh and turned into razor blades. A new token currency has arisen: “To deal with the coin shortage, some tea gardens in the north-eastern state of Assam have resorted to issuing cardboard coin-slips to their workers. The denomination is marked on these slips and they are used for buying and selling within the gardens.”

(via Marginal Revolution)

I couldn't find any photos of the cardboard 'coin-slips'. They are the same size as the coins they replace.

The USA has taken steps to prevent this from happening here: It's illegal to melt pennies or nickels. It is also illegal for travelers to carry more than 100 nickels out of the country.

Only two days left for bringing Cypriot coins into USA

David Welsh, on UNIDROIT-L, reports that import restrictions are being imposed on Cypriot coins.

The full text is available in The Federal Register v. 72 no. 134.

As of Monday you'll need a valid Cypriot export permit to bring ancient Cypriot coins into the USA. If you were planning on importing anything, spare yourself some trouble and do it this weekend.

Three more BMC Greek titles from Google Book Search

Vol. 16 Ionia, by Head, 1892.

• Preface,
  Contents,
  Coins,
  Indexes,
  Plates.
  

Vol. 17 Troas, Aeolis and Lesbos, by Wroth, 1894.

• Preface,
  Contents,
  Coins,
  Indexes,
  Plates.
  

Vol. 19 Lycia, Pamphylia and Pisidia, by Hill, 1897.

• Preface,
  Contents,
  Coins,
  Indexes,
  Plates.
  

All three volumes can be downloaded as PDF files.

Google now offers a 'view plain text' option that lets you see, as well as cut-and-paste, the OCRed text. (Cutting and pasting seemed to work better if I switched views to 'standard HTML mode', another new feature.) For these particular volumes the OCR is quite poor, probably because of the tables and multi-lingual text.

More )(

The )( symbol is a new obsession of Wayne Homren, who reports in today's e-Sylum that he has contracted the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz, Germany, The Type Museum here in London, the International Printing Museum near Los Angeles, the Museum of Printing in North Andover, MA; the JAARS Museum of the Alphabet in Waxhaw, NC; and the St. Brides Printing Library in London.

No useful replies yet.

In a June 3 comment here, Dr. Robert J. O’Hara pointed to an 18th century list of alchemical symbols, Medicinisch-Chymisch- und Alchemistisches Oraculum (1755), which includes both )( and ℞. Both symbols abbreviate words beginning with RE (Realgar and Recipe). If one needed to abbreviate “reverse” down to a single character to save space it makes sense to use a symbol which had already served that purpose. )( was such a symbol, but would numismatic readers in the 18th century have understood it?

The earliest numismatic use that I know of is from 1758, in a book published in Vienna, Prague, and Triest by Ioannis Thomae Trattner. However, I just haved looked. I don't have any 17th or 18th century books, and Google has scanned only a few. I would be curious to find earlier citations of the symbol. It would be interesting if the symbol started with publishers known for printing alchemical works. I have before never considered a connection between numismatics and alchemy.

It is interesting that the symbol died out. It was used by Eckhel, who is the father of numismatics as a science. It seems logical that authors would want to make the works look more like Eckhel's, so why did the symbol die out? Possibly type setters didn't have the symbol, but perhaps even in the 19th century no one knew the name of the symbol or its exact meaning?

More volumes of Num. Chron. online

I've updated my page devoted to online versions of the Numismatic Chronicle to include recent scanning efforts by the Internet Archive. The Archive has many volumes not available on Google Book Search, including volumes from the first two decades of the 20th century.

Charles Davis sale, July 14th

A catalog from Charles Davis appeared in my mailbox on Friday. 357 literature lots, and 356 are duplicates from the ANA library. The final lot is a charity auction for a Morocco binding of the auction catalog.

The catalog is also available online here. The online catalog seems identical to the printed one, except the page numbers are off-by-one.

Although the lots are duplicates, the ANA has a different meaning of duplicate than I do. For example, they are selling a first edition of BMC Cyprus (1904), with the amazing Autotype plates, but keeping the reprint. This kinda makes sense, as the original is falling apart. Yet if I owned both I'd consider the reprint to be the duplicate.

)( continued

This week's e-Sylum covered my quest to discover the name and origin of the )( symbol. I'd hoped an e-Sylum reader would just know, but none have contacted me yet.

Catalogue of the Greek and Roman Coins in the Numismatic Collection of Yale College, published in 1880 by Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor of New Haven Connecticut, makes heavy use of the symbol. The Abbreviations section says that )( is an abbreviation for 'reverse.'

This is the only American usage that I know of. No explanation.

The Abbreviations section includes three other symbols, the ligatures for AV, AR, and AE. The AE ligature is well-supported on computers. It has its own code in Unicode.

There are no Unicode characters for the AV and AR ligatures. They are considered typographic concepts, not letter concepts. For numismatics, that might not be true. Authors might want to use the AV and AR symbols to indicate coin metals, but wouldn't want a font that joined 'AR' or 'AV' in the middle of capitalized word.

The Medieval Unicode Font Initiative folks are proposing an AV ligature character. No one is talking about an AR ligature character.

Digital resources for collectors of Ptolemaic bronze coins

Daniel Wolf has launched a new web site, ptolemybronze.com, on Ptolemaic bronze coins. The site is punningly called “The PtolemAE Project”. When used together with special software on the site, and Catherine Lorber's translation of Svoronos, a very useful resource for scholars of Greek Egyptian coinage is provided.

The site has four important components:

• Wolf's own collection of Ptolemaic bronze, with execellent photos and notes. The coins can be viewed by monogram or size.
  
• Catalogs of obverse and reverse types, with photos from CNG and the Wolf collection.
  
• A hypertext paper on the Coinex hoard of Ptolemaic coins
  
• PtolemAE software for identification by Svoronos type

The catalogs of types are well organized. The thumbnails seem small on my 1400x1050 monitor, and I'd recommend larger ones. The only real flaw is that not every type is represented by a CNG or Wolf photograph. The reader is told to look at Svoronos. This text should be replaced by an image from Svoronos.

It's nice to see the Wolf collection pages organized both by monogram and size. (There is also a 'view all' option). The photographs are good. Wolf has descriptive text after each coin, with reference to SNG Copenhagen, Svoronos, and a few other works.

A great improvement to the Wolf collection pages would be to make the references to Svoronos hypertext. It would be wonderful if “Svoronos 1002 (Plate 30 #12)” was done as two links -- one to Svoronos 1002 and the other to plate 30.

The Coinex hypertext looked interesting, both numismatically and as a web site. I am not qualified to review this section, but encourage everyone interested in numismatic web sites or Egyptian coins to check it out.

The PtolemAE software is interesting. It's Java and 1MB in size. The user interface is a form. (There is a picture of it at the bottom of http://www.ptolemybronze.com/). The user chooses obverse type, reverse type, and symbols using Combo boxes. The software responds with Svoronos numbers and sizes for coins matching the user's chosen types and symbols.

The free version on the website shuts itself off after three minutes, but there seem to be no restrictions on using it multiple times, so this isn't a huge problem. There is also a pay version of the software, with additional combo boxes for right-side symbol and countermark, without the time limit. A 'modest' payment is requested for the pay version, but Wolf provides no hints as to the appropriate payment amount.

The software would be much improved if it included photographs of the Svoronos coins in the database, along with Lorber's text, or at least hypertext links to Ed Waddell's Svoronos web site.

The software would also be improved if it was in JavaScript and available on the web without download. However, this might be an expensive and time consuming undertaking, too large for a numismatist without the backing of an institution.

Because Wolf's site is so dependent on Svoronos, I must discuss Ed Waddell's presentation of Svoronos as well. First, I must thank Waddell and Lorber for making this available. Also, I must remind the reader that Waddell's digital version was done in 1999, making it one of the first (if not the very first) numismatic reference work online.

Waddell provides all of Svoronos' plates, but only in low-res. The size may have been appropriate for 640x480 screens in 1999, but is too small today. Although Lorber provides a useful concordance from plate number to Svoronos number, all of the concordances are together. It would be much more useful to put the concordance for each plate with the plate. The concordance itself should hyperlink to both the image plate and text plate.

The 'Text Plates' are a little bit bizarre, even for 1999. The reader would prefer text in his own fonts, text that can be copied to the clipboard. I imagine that Waddell and Lorber chose this format because of the difficulty displaying the various geometric monograms and Greek text in 1999. JPEG versions of the plates, in English, with correct symbols, is still an amazing accomplishment.

Although the linkage between Wolf's web site, his software, and Lorber/Waddell/Svoronos is clumsy, all the pieces are there. Wolf provides a much-needed introduction to Svoronos for the intermediate-level numismatist. His high-resolution color photos represent a significant numismatic publication, for which he deserves much credit.

HJB catalog 155

Harlan J. Berk catalog 155 is now online. 543 ancient coins.

Symbols.com

Symbols.com is a web site based on symbol dictionaries by Carl G. Luingman. Using it, I was able to quickly locate symbols similar to the mystery )( symbol (discussed previously here and here):

http://www.symbols.com/encyclopedia/08/0814.html
http://www.symbols.com/encyclopedia/08/0812.html

Unfortunately, neither symbol has a numismatic connection or name. So I'm stuck again.

Symbols.com's graphic index is an interesting presentation of a query-able symbol dictionary. Such a dictionary would be useful for identifying ancient symbols, such as on coins. I'm imagining augmenting the 'obverse symbol' and 'reverse symbol' field in coin databases by using Luingman's group numbers for mysterious symbols, such as triskeles, ankhs, etc.

Münsterberg

Rudolf Münsterberg published the names of magistrates known to have struck Greek coins. His lists, originally published in 1911, 1912, 1914, and 1927 are still useful today.

I'm working to put his work online: Die Beamtennamen auf den griechischen Münzen (Official Names on Greek Coins).

Although the book is in German, no knowledge of that language is needed, because the book is just lists. For every Greek city whose coins bear the names or abbreviation of a magistrate, Münsterberg gives the magistrate's name and references a coin with this name. Münsterberg's indexes present all known names in alphabetical order.

The book was somewhat difficult to use. When used to identify an otherwise unknown coin, the user must look up the inscription in the index to get the page number for the cities with that name. Then, the name must be looked up for each city. Finally, the citations to actual matching coins must be looked up, often in a BMC volume, an Imhoof-Blumer book, or Mionnet.

Using Münsterberg to research the magistrates for a city wasn't much easier.

Of course, if the name doesn't turn up in the index it might appear in a later update, requiring the reader to check several places before giving up.

My site attempts to correct these problems. First, I have merged the updates with the original coins, something Münsterberg's printers couldn't afford to do. Second, as of today, I've converted the page number references to hyperlinks. When Münsterberg cites a BMC/Imhoof-Blumer/Mionnet, and Google has scanned the work, then my HTML conversion of Münsterberg can take you right there.

An actual database and query language could improve this, but would be time-consuming or expensive to implement. Using hyperlinks is good enough. Further efforts should be directed towards scanning the books lacking in Google rather than trying to improve the query interface.

It would also be useful to translate Münsterberg's remarks into English. If a reader wishes to take on that task I'll give you credits and a banner ad on the page.

Dig in Turkey disrupted by the Occult

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/38680

Another varient of mystery Latin symbol for 'reverse'

We previously discussed Eckhel's decorative symbol for reverse, which looks something like a cross between an asterisk and )(.

Notitia elementaris numismatum antiquorum ... (1758), by Erasmus Fröhlich, uses a similar symbol.



The symbol can be seen in context on page 21. Like Eckhel, sometimes )( is used instead, such as on page 73.

I'd really like to learn what the symbol is called, and why it came to represent the reverse of a coin.

I spotted a 20th century use of the )( form, in Haeberlin's Aes Grave (1910). So use of the symbol died out less than 100 years ago. Aes Grave is in German, so it's another non-Latin usage of the symbol.

Upcoming coin talks in NYC

Alan Roche will be speaking on numismatic imaging at the ANS tomorrow. He is the ANS coin photographer. I believe the talk is open to the public.

I had planned to attend but may miss it.

The ANS has promoted Roche's talk, but has neglected to mention that the Summer Seminar is now open to members. The seminar schedule includes some important topics. Last year I saw Dr. Bates presentation on Money Before Machinery which was interesting. The purpose of these talks is to teach PhD students in classics about coins, so the material is simultaneously introductory and advanced.

I think the policy of opening the lectures to members is a big deal and I'm surprised that it wasn't mentioned in their email newsletter, amnumsoc-l, the ANS Magazine, the postcard for the Roche talk, or yesterday's ANS letter on the 100-year anniversary of the Saint-Gaudens gold pieces.

The most impressive numismatic book?

I recently saw E. J. Haeberlin's Aes Grave (1910) at the ANS library. The plate volume is the most impressive numismatic publication I've seen.

First, it's huge. The pages are folio size. I wish I had measured them. My recollocation is that each page was 3'x2', although that seems impossibly large. It is probably about half that.

Second, the printing. The book was printed with a collotype process. This makes each page near photographic in quality. No masking or pixelization. The paper may have changed color but the ink doesn't look faded at all. The black and white printing gives them a dreamlike quality.

Third, the 'coins'. Very large Roman cast coins. Coins weighing half a pound. The designs aren't complex or especially lifelike. The primitive casting technology forced the Romans to use very simple designs. Simplification gives the coins a powerful and primitive appearance. The coin's large size gives them an alien appearance.

Finally, the surfaces. I don't know if the rough surface represents a patina or the casting technology. The collotype process seems to have captured it perfectly. Lacking the coins, I can't be sure, perhaps the collotype process improved the texture making it look more like grainy art photography. Any, it looked cool.

Forni is offering a reprint for 460 euros. An Italian bookseller website says it's an 'anastatic reprint'. I don't know what anastatic means. I assume the quality will be much lower than collotype.

Der interaktive Katalog des Münzkabinetts

As reported by cogito on ancients.info, the Berlin state museum
(Staatliche Museen zu Berlin) ancient coin collection is now online.

New strategy for OCR

Ben Maurer is proposing a new way to 'OCR' old books. Words the computer can't OCR will be turned into CAPTCHAs.

A possible problem is that OCR programs often can't distinguish a word from a smudge, decorative gylph. Books often contain occasional Greek letters, nonsense, etc. So if the CAPTCHA implementation isn't good, Ben's strategy will add to the 19 person-years already wasted every day filling out annoying CAPTCHAs.

Still, it is a good idea and worth considering.

A numismatic commentary on Pausanias (1887)

Microsoft's scanning effort is starting to bear fruit.

A numismatic commentary on Pausanias (1887) by Percy Gardner and F. Imhoof-Blumer. Unlike Google, the PDFs include OCRed text, and thus are searchable.

Five more BMC volumes

Google has given us five more volumes of BMC:

BMC Thrace (volume 3, Head and Gardner, 1871)

BMC Seleucid (volume 4, Gardner, 1878)

BMC Thessaly (volume 7, Gardner, 1883)

BMC Central Greece (volume 8, Head, 1884)

BMC Phyrgia (volume 25, Head, 1906)

At this point they aren't downloadable as .PDFs. Sometimes fresh titles can't be downloaded for a week or so, I'm hoping these will be available soon.

I've been working on a web page for BMC volumes. The goal is to reverse-link the plates, so that one can flip through plates and get Sear numbers and hyperlinks to Google. This is my own project, I don't think the BM even knows I do it. I emailed them once about rights to a book and got no answer, so I assumed they were too busy and took initiative myself.

Perhaps I'll find time to index Google's latest, although this month I'm very busy getting caught up with digitizing the ANS Magazine. (The current issues, with their support, for their website!)

It costs Google about $30 to scan a BMC volume, so the five volumes means they spent about $150 to greatly improve my hobby. I appreciate that. I often wonder why this job falls on Google. The institutions that paid for the writing and publishing just 100 years ago lack the interest (or will?) to scan their own books. These institutions don't even link to Google's editions from their web sites!

It isn't just institutions; for years I begged people to send me particular old coin books for scanning. I got a few emails but no books ever arrived. Somehow I'm misjudging what people will think is a good idea....

May 2007 Celator

The May 2007 Celator arrived yesterday. I was pleased to see a lot of material on literature for Greek collectors.

Part 2 of Reid Goldsborough's article on Greek attribution guides appears. Reid is kind enough to mention this blog and my web site. His complete list of SNG volumes and parts, with their sizes, is very useful. (It is also online).

Daniel Koppersmith's article briefly discusses the auction catalogs of all the major firms selling Greek coins for about the last 100 years. He gives each firm 1-4 stars, and mentions catalogs of particular importance in each series. Koppersmith's efficient format covers a lot of information in just four pages. I learned a lot, but the article left me wanting to know more, especially about the 3 and 4-star catalogs, such as their availability and cost.

Ursula Kampmann's press release on the James Joy collection of Greek bronzes is a mini-review of the upcoming M&M auction. Kampmann neglected to mention Mr. Joy is that guy who has been running classified ads in The Celator for at least the last ten years looking for coins of Greek islands. I always wondered what kind of response he got....

Kolbe auction 103

Kolbe auction 103 arrived in the mail today. The catalog is also available on the website. 770 lots. Not a lot of material related to ancients in this auction.

The Kolbe publishing arm has released a new book on “Comitia Americana” medals. Details are available on the website.

How to use ISEGRIM

ISEGRIM is searched using an ISEGRIM-specific query language (rather than simple web forms.) Learning a bit of the language is necessary to use ISEGRIM.

When searching for matches to an unknown coin, the most important search parameters are the obverse type, the reverse type, the metal, and the city. ISEGRIM uses the following database field names, based on German abbreviations:

• VT Obverse Type
  
• VA Obverse Attributes
  
• RT Reverse Type
  
• RA Reverse Attributes
  
• M Metal
  
• PO City / Poleis
  

ISEGRIM uses the colon (:) as the equals sign. The colon means exact match. (Actually, it's a 'regular expression' match).

For example, suppose we are looking for silver coins with a boar on the obverse. The ISEGRIM query for this is

vt:boar m:ar

This isn't a very good query. Although it matches against 'BOAR', it doesn't match 'BOAR WINGED'. To search for anything beginning with 'BOAR...' on a silver coin, append ".*", like this:

vt:boar.* m:ar

The ".*" is a 'regular expression'. It means "any amount of any character". (I recommend appending ".*" no matter what you are looking for.)

Sometimes I want to search for a phrase, such as 'BOAR WINGED'. The obvious query 'vt:boar winged' wouldn't work, because ISEGRIM doesn't see a join between 'boar' and 'winged'. Use a period (.) instead of the space:

vt:boar.winged.*

The period is a regular expression meaning "any character" (including space).

It is also possible to prepend ".*". So to search for anything flying right, use

vt:.*flying.r.* m:ar

ISEGRIM describes types at multiple levels of specificity. So a coin depicting Athena is listed using both 'WOMAN' and 'ATHENA'. This is incredibly useful because sometimes it is impossible to identify the particular diety or person without knowing the city. This principle is what makes ISEGRIM far more useful than other query systems.

ISEGRIM lists 'attributes' such as clothing and objects in the 'attribute' fields, not the type fields. So to search for a helmeted Athena use

vt:athena.* and va:helmet.*

The ISEGRIM format is very similar to the format in Otfried von Vacano's book Typenkatalog der anitiken Münzen Kleinasiens (1986), and Vacano works on ISEGRIM.

Mionnet's Scale

I always thought that Mionnet invented his scale, but it seems to be merely improvements to a scale by Charles Combe. Here is Mionnet's scale and Combe's scale (from 1782!) together.

Many of the circles are the same size. Combe uses letters, and in tables gives sizes as a letter, often with a + or -.

Symbols meaning 'reverse'

The great English numismatist Barclay Head used the ℞ symbol (Rx, the “prescription symbol” to mean “reverse.” For example, in his 1911 work Historia Numorum, p. 13, he says “Symbol on ℞. Club” while describing a coin with a club on its reverse. What is the name and origin of the symbol as applied to numismatics?

The Unicode standard calls the symbol “Prescription Take”. The Wikipedia page for Rx says that Rx is the symbol for medical prescriptions. (Wikipedia also gives a numismatic meaning: Rx means “tens of Rupees”).

The Straight Dope, Cecil Adams’ newspaper column, gives the medical history of the Rx symbol. There is controversy among pharmacy historians. There are three theories. 1. “Rx is an abbreviation for the Latin word ‘recipere’ or ‘recipe,’ which means ‘Take, thou.’”. 2. Rx is the astrological symbol for the god Jupiter. 3. Rx comes from the Egyptian symbol for the left Eye of Horus.

None of these sources explains why ℞ would be used in numismatic works to mean “reverse”. Barclay Head isn’t the only writer to use the symbol, it was also used by French writers Mionnet and Babelon in the 19th century. It is always followed by a period.



Another odd symbol was used in the 18th century. J. H. Eckhel used a symbol that looks like a cross between mismatched parenthesis, )(, and an asterisk to mean “reverse”. For example, volume 2 page 209 of Eckhel’s Doctrina numorum veterum (1792). I don’t know the name for this symbol, or if it was ever used non-numismatically. Eckhel also used )( without the decoration – perhaps his publishers didn’t have enough of the rare symbol to set type? At least one English-language author used the symbol in the reversed parenthesis form, R. S. Conway (The Italic Dialects (1897), for example p. 14).

Speculations: Eckhel’s reverse symbol is 1. a decorative version of actual mismatched parenthesis, 2. a decorative version of the Roman ‘Denarius Sign’ (an X with a line through it), or 3. a version of the Pisces astrological symbol without a space between the fishes. The problem with these theories is that the symbol doesn't look much like any of them. Pisces makes the most sense, as the Pisces symbol is supposed to represent two connected fishes swimming in opposite directions.

I would enjoy corresponding with anyone on this topic.

Coins that are difficult to catalog

Some coins are difficult to catalog, because scholarship is not in agreement about the origin. The attribution of this coin is apparently insecure.

An anonymous cataloger (Künker auction 97, March 2005, lot 897) attributes to Euagoras II, 361-351 BC, Salamis Mint. Cites Babelon (Les Perses Achemenides (1893), #191) and Koray Konuk (SNG Kayhan 1066). The cataloger hedges saying an alternate is an uncertain Cilician mint.

Another cataloger (CNG, MBS 67, September 2004, lot 825) attributes to Datames, Satrap of Cilicia and Cappadocia. 384-362 BC, citing George Hill (BMC Cilicia (1900), pg. 100, 25) (as Mallos) and Babelon, (Les Perses Achemenides (1893), #191).

A similar coin is fancifully attributed to “Memnon, Satrap in Ionien (?)” in Nachfolger auction 376 (October 2003, lot 357). This attribution was not satisfying; a similar coin (auction 386, April 2006, lot 256) was catalogued as the satrap Mazaios, 361-334 BC, struck at an uncertain mint but possible Tarsos; citing Axel Winzer (Antike Portraitmünzen der Perser und Griechen (2005)).

A Baldwin’s cataloger attributes one of these (auction 34, October 2003, lot 84) to “Caria/Ionia, uncertain mint, satrapal coinage, time of Artaxerxes III, c. 358-340 BC” citing “Traité p.167, 30; Head, Coinage of Lydia and Persia, pl.III, 27, Pharnabazus”

The Roman Coinage of Cyprus

John Aveline reviews Park's The Roman Coinage of Cyprus for Bryn Mawr Classical Review.

(Via rogueclassicism).

Athens - Sparta - New York

The three irregular lines are supposedly the traditional spit coinage of Sparta. The originals are in New York City for the next three weeks, as part of an exhibition, Athens-Sparta, at the Onassis Cultural Center, 645 Fifth Avenue.

Admission is free. There is a lot of amazing pottery and scuplture, nearly all from Athens or Sparta.

I was also excited about some metal toy soldiers and mythological monsters. The exhibit card said the figures had some votive purpose. Maybe they are found in temples, but I still think they are toy soldiers. A lot of Christian churches keep a room full of toys, and not for any religious purpose other than to get parents to come to Bible study class.

Anyway, the coins. A very nice group of Athenian coins, including one of the ANS's dekadrachms. Most (all?) denominations of the Athena-owl coinage are on display, including the tiny fractions.

There is also a group of coinage spits of Sparta. I have no idea how archeologists tell these spits from cooking spits, it wasn't explained in the exhibit. (There is a very nice $30 catalog of the show but I didn't get it.)

A Syracusan dekadrachm is also present. I don't know why. It is on display in the middle of the Athenian coins. It kind of looks out-of-place. I never thought I'd turn down seeing a dekadrachm but the Athenian coinage would have been more impressive without the Sicilian invader.

The Bill Wyman Signature Detector

Bill Wyman quit his band, the Rolling Stones, 15 years ago. He now writes about antiquties (Bill Wyman's Treasure Island) and recently designed a new metal detector.

This is a great development. We need more numismatic authors and antiquities experts. If you are in a band, maybe The Who or Pink Floyd, now is your chance to do something important like writing literature.

While researching this story (looking at the Wikipedia entry for Bill Wyman), I learned that he was his own grandfather. You blow my mind, Bill Wyman.

BMC Crete and the Aegean Islands

Google now brings Warwick Wroth's 1886 catalog BMC Crete and the Aegean Islands!

CNG 75

The CNG 75 auction is online. 570 book lots, 575 ancient Greek lots, etc., etc., etc.

(Update) The most interesting coin is lot 392, a fourée electrum 1/24 stater. The anonymous cataloger tells us that this coin proves the same mint made good and fourée coins. It would be interesting to re-examine the good specimens in light of the new piece!

More auctions

The Numismatica Ars Classica auction 39, auction 40, and auction R catalogs are online. The highlight is lot #8, an Akragas tetradrachm, although there is an Athenian dekadrachm with a higher estimate. Closing May 15, 2007.

The Hess-Divo auction 307 catalog is online. Closing June 6, 2007.

Gerhard Hirsch Nachfolger catalogs online

The Gerhard Hirsch Nachfolger auction catalogs 250 and 251 are online. They also arrived in the mail today. The auction 250 catalog is hardcover and celebrates the 125 anniversary of Hirsch (1878-2007). The coins are very high quality.

55 lots of ancients in auction 250 and about 600 in auction 251.


I was just thinking about Hirsch's illustrious history this afternoon. I know they sold Imhoof-Blumer's collection in 1907. 2515 lots. I have a lot of photocopies of Imhoof-Blumer's works, and they often describe a rare or unique coin, unpictured, and say "M.S." which is German for "My Collection". It would be a nice catalog to have, or to have a CD-ROM of. I've never actually seen a copy, although the ANS has one.

19th century Numismatic Chronicles

Google recently added a bunch more full-view and downloadable issues of the Numismatic Chronicle. Most of the 1850s issues are now available. I've updated my web page on available issues. The new issues were scanned at the UofM and the Bodleian. Thanks.

Google is still blocking most non-US countries from this material. At the bottom of my NC page is a link to access my page through a US proxy. Use that. My favorite proxy is now running advertising banners, but it isn't bad.

The Baldwin's catalogs for the April 24-25th auctions are online

The auctions are #50, #51, and 'Islamic #12'. The Islamic auction is at Sixbid.com as interactive HTML and on Baldwin's usual website in PDF format. Baldwin's is in London but their website address is baldwin.sh, suggesting they are located on the South Atlantic Isle of St. Helena! Do not be fooled. If you are in London it is worth stopping in; I was able to get a copy of SNG Levante Supplement inexpensively three years ago there.

Auction 50 is Ancient, British, and Indian coins. Only 205 ancients, but one is an Athenian dekadrachm!

Auction 51 is foreign, medals, and books. There are only about 150 lots of books but many are group lots with several titles, and the selection of books on Indian numismatics is good.

I got the auction 50 catalog in the mail with an offprint of 51 containing just the books. I've never seen an auction offprint before. It is a good idea; books descriptions don't need to be printed on super-glossy paper. It also saves space, because I don't need the medal catalog.

Medialia

I visited the Industrialization exhibit at Medialia on Saturday. I'd like to recommend the show, but Saturday was the last day.

The show presented art and historical medals on the theme of industrialization. I enjoyed the show, which occupied two glass cases in the small gallery, as well as the permanent medal collection. My favorite pieces were some Japanese medals what seemed like a traditional style, and a Soviet space medal showing the Baikonur Cosmodrome behind Kazakh peasants.

Medialia is a gallery selling fine art sculpture. All the pieces are small, and most are what I'd call art medals. Until last week, I was unaware that New York even had a medal gallery. I've been to most of the shops that advertise in the ‘Coin and Stamp Dealer’ category in the phone book or whom show at the few local coin shows. Medialia doesn't do either. It appears in the phone book under ‘Antique Dealers’ and ‘Art Galleries & Dealers’.

I didn't know how to behave in the shop. When I'm in a coin dealer, I know that nearly everything is for sale, and that anything I'm not allowed to touch will be in a protective slab or 2x2. At an art gallery, one never touches anything.

I was given a free catalog of the show. It wasn't on glossy paper but it was still nice — and something one doesn't get at coin shops. The catalog seemed like something that medal and numismatic literature collectors would want, but I've never seen a Medialia catalog in a coin book auction and the ANS library appears to lack them as well. So, the catalogs are a new offering or great rarities.

At Medialia, only a few of the items had prices. The prices seemed high to me, but the medals offered were mostly better than the $50 medals I've bought at coin shows and on eBay. I plan to go back again, and learn about art medals. The space seems to host a lot of short shows. I picked up an announcement about an opening this Saturday, but the details are not yet on the web site.

Bootleg Bulletin on Counterfeits

I received the bootleg Bulletin on Counterfeits yesterday.

Although ‘Microbe’ promised a pressed CD all I received was an unlabelled CD-R.

The CD-R contains the 1976-1999 run, as JPEG files, two pages per file. The pages were scanned at 150dpi. The pages are quite readable, although on some years there is bleed-through from the other side of the page. (Recommendation: put black construction paper between pages while scanning to counteract this scanning flaw.)

The disc also contains a 21 page MS-Word format index. The index is broken down by category (Greek Silver through Modern). The contents of each category are sorted alphabetically by city or country. It's useful, but an improvement would be an HTML document that hyperlinks to the individual page files.

I don't know if the bootlegger wrote the index or if he merely acquired it elsewhere. This index is different from the partial index at the Lakdiva site. I hope the author puts it online.

German translation

A lot of numismatic books are written only in German. I don't read German, but I need to read German coin descriptions. Here's what I do.

The first step is to type in the German text. It's important to get accents right. Use Windows Character Map (Linux has something similar) or the 'Insert Symbol' feature in Microsoft Word. Then I feed the text to Google Language Tools for a very rough translation.

Google is lacking a lot of words. There are four dictionaries I use. For coins, Münzen Lexikon is useful. There are also two big general German-to-English dictionaries online, LEO and The New English-German Dictionary.

There is also a Wiki translating dictionary, Wiktionary. If none of the above dictionaries have the word I can go there and enter requests for English definitions of German words by volunteer translators.

The text that comes out of Google is often poor, especially because without a numismatic dictionary Google doesn't even know the parts of speech. However, I can hand-edit the text into something readable, especially if I have a picture of the coin being described to refer to.

Other multilingual numismatic glossaries are Wörterbuch der gebräuchlichsten Fachausdrücke für Münzsammler and Moruzzi Numismatica glossary, but I rarely have luck there.

For abbreviations, like "pkr" (= perlkreis) I have to ask for the full word on an ancient coin website.

LHS and Tkalec catelogs online

The LHS auction 100 and Tkalec 2007 auction catalogs are online. The LHS auction is April 23/24th and the Tkalec is April 22nd.