Gorgon/helmet

Many of the coins in my collection are very small. Here is the obverse of a gorgon/helmet fraction. I cannot find my scan of the reverse (and of course the coin is in the safety deposit box.)

The coin is 6.5mm in diameter and weighs 0.22g. The reverse type can be seen on this example on CoinArchives. Although LHS attributed the coin to Maroneia an example from M&M appears to have the letters O-Π in the corners suggesting NEOΠ or Neapolis.

Collectors of ancients often praise the engraving skills of the ancients but look how small the statue of Lincoln in the memorial is! (It was mechanically reduced, of course.)

Pegasos/gorgon

I love the expression on this gorgon's face. I bought this obol in 2001 from Lanz's auction of Mr. BCD's Corinth collection. I'm very happy that my example of this coin comes from my favorite die of the type. It's a tiny coin; just 10mm across.

My version is a later example. I'm guessing it was made between 400 BC and the Macedonian occupation of 338 BC.

The earlier coinage featured a stern gorgon in an incuse square with the letters TRIH, for trihemiobol, in the corners. Although E. M. Cousinery attributed an example of this coin to Corinth in 1825 a paper by H. P. Borrell in the Numismatic Chronicle of 1840 argued for Tiridia in Thrace, a city with no known coinage, based on Borrell's misunderstanding of the inscription.

The same type was struck by Anaktorion, Leukas, and Medeon in Akarnania. The attribution to Medeon isn't secure; the M could be for Metropolis, Mesma, or it could be a Σ on it's side. It would be nice to assemble a set of these by mints but I probably won't live long enough. Coins of Medeon are rare! A note in the BCD auction (Akarnanien, October 2007) for a stater of Medeon says it is the only silver coin from that city to appear on the market during the last 40 years.

Make your own coins

You can own Nevada Coin Minting for $950,000 (or the best offer over $250,000). For your money you get to run tokens.com, usmint.net, a 360 ton coining press, over a million blanks, a coin conveyer belt, furnaces, pantographes, coin washing and drying machines, a centrifugal casting machine, and two US patents on coin colorization.

(The offer is from late 2007 I don't know if it is still good.)

You also get a Gaming Control Board approved portable destruction machine. “In the past old tokens were thrown into cement, Lake Mead, or taken to scrap yards to be destroyed, which caused unnecessary expenditures of time and money to ensure that security was properly maintained. With the machinery that was developed by NCM we can destroy approximately 900 coins a minute per machine in the casino’s cage...”

Gorgon/cow

Alfredo asked to see some favorites from my collection. This coin is a large-ish and heavy (21mm; 10.7g) bronze of Parion. It's similar in style to the common gorgon/cow hemidrachms.

I was the underbidder in the Dr. Busso Peus Nachfolger auction, October 2003. After I lost I regretted it and felt I should have bid higher. So I was very excited to see this coin turn up again in Ed Waddell's trays at the New York show a few months later for not much more the high bid plus juice. I have been able to trace this coin back to a Bankhaus H. Aufhaeuser auction in October 1988.

Parion struck bronze gorgons with several reverse types. The only one that shows up with any frequency is the eagle. The cow type appears in three sizes. The large size shown here has the most primitive appearance and is probably the earliest. The middle size lacks the protruding tongue and the gorgon seems more human. I recall von Aulock describing the type middle type as depicting Athena, but on the best specimens like this CNG example there are faint snake-ties below the chin. The smallest size gorgon/cow is quite rare — I only know of the specimen in the BM catalog.

So when was it struck? I don't trust published dates for bronzes of Parion. Warwick Wroth divided the BM's Parion pieces into '350-300 or later' and 'Circ. 200 - Augustus' categories. Putting "or later" into a date range is a bit weaselly. And what did the good citizens used from 300 to 200 BC? Parion's neighbors were striking bronze as early as 440 BC (Pergamon) and 400 BC (Kyzikos). My best guess is that both this coin and the hemidrachms date no earlier than 360 BC when Parion was conquered by Iphiades of Abydos.

Gorgon/blank

On a recent suggestion thread Kevin expressed an interested in my collection.

I am collecting ancient coins depicting gorgons. I hope to write a book about them someday. (I have extensive notes towards that end.) If anyone has a coin with a gorgon they can't identify send it my way for a free ID or a chance to be in a book. Dealer inquiries encouraged.

Recently I purchased a tiny fraction on eBay. 0.21g, 7mm, and thin. I'm not sure what it is. The seller attributed it as Selge so I'm assuming he thinks it came from southern Turkey.

My hunch is that it matches a unique (or formerly unique) fraction published in SNG Levante and attributed by Edoardo Levante to Kelenderis. That piece weighs only half as much and may lack the beaded border so I am not certain. Selge and Kelenderis are fairly close geographically.

Perhaps the coin is merely blank due to heavy wear? Last year I bought a coin that appeared to have a strange blank reverse from a VCoins dealer but it turned out to just be a damaged image of Athena on a non-rare coin usually attributed to "Selge or Aspendos".

If Levante knew the provenance of his coin he didn't say. A blank side is unusual in Greek coins. Nearby Selge has a lion/blank type (very rare; in the Paris collection). There are also gorgon fractions and a unique stater attributed to Selge but the attributions are somewhat dubious. As far as I can tell the common attribution of numerous gorgon types to Selge rests upon a coin in the BM with inscription "ΣΤ" in the Pisidian language and some coffins Waddington saw in the 1850s. I don't know what a "Τ" is doing in the name Selge but then I don't speak Pisidian!

Cities proposed for the gorgon/Athena fractions are Aspendos (by George Hill), Selge (by Waddington), Etenna (by Imhoof-Blumer), and Side (by Imhoof-Blumer).

Argentine professor faces prison time for posting unofficial translations of out of print Derrida texts

A philosophy professor at Universidad Nacional de Lanús in Argentina faces possible jail time for posting translations of out of print books.

Most of these texts were out of print, or had never been translated. Now a publisher is bringing a few of these books into Argentina, and they're trying to get this prof imprisoned for supporting Derrida while he was unavailable.

(via bOING bOING, which links to Spanish-language story.)

American law probably isn't so strict, but the ethical issues are similar. What should be the penalty for translating out-of-print technical books?

R. Goldsborough recently posted on this subject to the e-Sylum. He queried five lawyers, 40% of whom said Tsvi Rogin's proposed translation of Problemeder frühen Elektronprägung could be illegal. Reid concluded that the legality of unauthorized uncommercial translations haven't been tested by the courts and violate no laws until the courts decide the matter.

I would be unwilling to be the test case! I figure if 40% of lawyers think something is illegal I'm likely to get a judge who agrees. I'm certain Goldsborough is wrong but it's similar to the old saw about foul balls and umpires. Does the umpire call the ball because it's foul, or does the umpire calling the ball make it foul? If calling a ball makes it foul then Reid is right and I am wrong.

Journal of Ancient Numismatics 3

Volume 3 of Alfredo de la Fe's Journal of Ancient Numismatics is online, with contributions by David Vagi, Curtis Clay, Georges Depeyrot and others.

Rare Greek portrait coins: Thraso

The Wikipedia entry for the Indo-Greek king Thraso describes his coinage:

... in a style similar to those of Menander I, has the same type of Athena, and shares one of Menander's mint marks. On the coin, the title of Thraso is "Basileus Megas" ("Great King"), a title which only Eucratides the Great had dared take before him and which is seemingly misplaced on the young boy Thraso ...

The Thraso coin has never been photographed. Wikipedia cites R. C. Senior, Decline of the Indo-Greeks (1998) and says "The coin belonged to a secretive coin-collector, who did not allow Senior to photograph it, and it remains unpublished."

Not only is the coin unpublished, it may represent a portrait of Thraso whose appearance is otherwise unknown. The bronze coinage of Menander is described as having Athena's head on the obverse. This description comes from James Prinsep (“New Types of Bactrian and Indo-Scythic Coins, Engraved as Pl. XXXII”, Essays on Indian antiquities vol. 1 (1858), p. 399). Prinsep named the obverse bust as “Athena” and this has stuck although the features greatly resemble those of Menander himself!

Not to scale. The coin on the left depicts “Athena”, the right Menander. That Athena sure looks a lot like the first Greek Buddhist king.

(Images used without permission, but are from cngcoins.com, the the tetradrachm is available in CNG's web store.)

Why so quiet lately?

A Gift for Polydektes uses sitemeter.com to track readers. I get about 30-35 visitors a day. It provides a free cute map telling where readers are from and what link they clicked to visit.

The last forty visitors breaks down like this: 13 from unknown (bookmarks&bots), 19 from Google searches (mostly related to the topics I discuss!), 3 from Yahoo search, 2 from links on my web site and two from other blogs (moneta-l-bloggers and A Survey of Ancient Coins).

So I'm getting readers -- that's great. I was hoping this medium would be more interactive and I'm slightly concerned that no one has commented on my last 14 posts. I was wondering what kind of posts would get more reader interaction? The only person who responds regularly is Wayne Homren, who responds through his own popular meta-blog the e-Sylum.

Reader survey: What kind of posts would you be willing to respond to? Book/site reviews? Dealer interviews? Digitization and computer stuff? Fakes? Other? Guest co-bloggers? How about 'open threads' where you can post your own questions or promote your own web site?

Texture analysis of ancient coins with TOF neutron diffraction

Frank Kovacs contributed to a paper, “Texture analysis of ancient coins with TOF neutron diffraction” (along with Yanxia Xie, L. Lutterotti and H. R. Wenk) for the Journal of Materials Science (2004).

The scientists compare a Black Sea Hoard coin, usually called fake, from Mesembria with a genuine example. The paper calls them hemiobols but they look like diobols.

... neither with phase proportions nor texture patterns can we distinguish between the two coins. The observed texture is consistent with ancient practice to produce coins by striking between two dies..... Therefore, no conclusions can be drawn about the authenticity of the coins....

(via the Science & Coins page on the Robert Matthews Coin Authentication site.)

Nomos AG auction 1

The catalog for the upcoming (May 6th) Nomos auction 1 is up at SixBid.com.

Nomos AG is the re-established coin company directed by Alan Walker (formerly of Leu/LHS).

The catalog features 132 amazing Greek coins including two Akragas tetradrachms and a Naxos tetradrachm. (Actualy 135 coins — lot 6 is a hoard of four coins found in a river inside a small bronze box.) The picture above is a rare Tenedos didrachm. There are also Roman coins, including many gold lots.

What does $1 trillion dollars look like?

Someone on PageTutor.com has created cartoons of what various piles of money look like, including $1,000,000,000,000 (one of the stimulus amounts).

Apparently Google SketchUp was used to make the images.

(via bOING bOING)

Incredibly Strange Appraisal Mathematics

News-Antique.com reports on the Tamoikins, who have Solved the Last Unregulated Marked of Art, Antiquity, and Collectables!

A 107 page PDF by Dmitriy and Mikhail Tamoikin (of the Tamoikin Family Museum apparently of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada) explains the solution.

With Method TES any trained customs officer can make an independent appraisal of any item. If the owner already has a TES appraisal the officer can check its legitimacy and personally audit the entire process. Complete Item Information Document stores all known information about the item in a user friendly format allowing any person without training fully understand what is written in the document and how relevant that information is. Secure Item Identification System (SIIS) provides a unique identity to an item so that even identical copies are easily told apart and the issue of authenticity becomes no longer a problem. Finally all information is registered in what will become a Unified National Database giving policing agencies an incredible tool against art crime.

...

Tamoikins Knowledge Institute totally solved the problem of lending money for art, antiquity and collectibles opening to the banks and wide public a completely new money lending sector! How? By providing the banking industry everything it needs to safely lend money to everyone regardless of their social status. If a person is of adult age and has no problems acquiring a credit card, he or she can use personally owned art, antiquity and collectibles as collateral to borrow money!

There is also a Russian Patent, filed in 2005, Method for Evaluating Collectibles and Device for Carrying out Said Method.

The Untold Story of the World's Biggest Diamond Heist

Joshua Davis reports for Wired on The Untold Story of the World's Biggest Diamond Heist.

In 2000, Notarbartolo rented a small office in the Diamond Center, one of the area's largest buildings. He presented himself as a gem importer based in Turin, Italy, and scheduled meetings with numerous dealers. He bought small stones, paid cash, dressed well, and cheerfully mangled the French language. The dealers probably never knew that they had just welcomed one of the world's best jewel thieves into their circle.

...

Notarbartolo was buzzed into the vault the next day, Friday, February 14—the day before the robbery. He was alone. In his jacket pocket, he carried a can of women's hair spray. ... It was a simple but effective hack: The oily film would temporarily insulate the sensor from fluctuations in the room's temperature, and the alarm went off only if it sensed both heat and motion.

...

The murky nature of the diamond trade makes it difficult to get clear answers. For instance, detective De Bruycker says that three-quarters of the business is done under the table. According to Denice Oliver, the adjuster who investigated the robbery for insurers, there were roughly $25 million in claims, all documented by legitimate invoices. As a result, De Bruycker calculated that at least another $75 million in goods was stolen, bringing the total value of the heist to about $100 million.

Leonardo Notarbartolo was just released from a Belgian prison.

negative shadow

A recent post on the e-Sylum by Dick Johnson gives a name, negative shadow, to a kind of toning seen on struck silver coins where the devices and inscriptions a projected in toning onto the field.

This effect reminds me greatly of an effect on Roman coins discussed on Moneta-L back in 2004.



(The Roman coin image is from Warren Esty's page).

The most detailed explanation on Moneta-L came from a post by Robert Kokotailo of Calgary coin. I wonder if this is the same effect?

I'm glad to have a name for it! (If it is the same phenomenon.) The name most popular on Moneta-L was 'ghosting', which is also a technical term in numismatics for clashed die errors that leave a 'ghost' of the type on one side upon the other.

Gold/coin tour at New York Fed

John Horn describes the gold, numismatic, and counterfeit exhibits at the New York Fed for the travel section of The Providence Journal.

I also recommend this tour. Book in advance to see the gold. You don't need to book in advance to see the ANS coin exhibit or the counterfeit exhibit.

Fort Knox Receives $85 from Cash4Gold

Other blogs are reporting that the government of China is unhappy that some palace decorations claimed as spoils during the Opium war were recently auctioned by a collector.

On the lighter side we bring you The Onion's coverage of Fort Knox Receives $85 from Cash4Gold (audio clip).

Geitner: “I believe we could have pawned the Liberty Bell for more than that!”

Opening at Medialia in NYC on March 7th

Two exhibits open next Saturday at New York's Medialia Gallery. In space 1 will be The Second International Medallic Sculpture Competition for Emerging Artists featuring work by grand prize recipient Nicole Vlado and others. USA FIDEM will be shown in space 2. The opening is from 3-6pm.

Modern coins may not look as good as ancient coins. Modern medals are pretty good! It is hard to learn about art medal collecting as their are almost no books and the magazines are only available with membership in little-known societies. I urge coin collectors interested in modern art to visit the gallery. There are works for sale there by many living artists, some of which really push the bounderies of medallic art.

The web site, medialiagallery.com includes some interesting pictures, although not of the medals from this opening. Medialia is a commercial gallery; many works will be for sale but I don't know if the medals from this exhibition will be.

Kolbe auction 109 on Thursday

George Kolbe's numismatic literature auction 109 closes this Thursday, March 5th.

863 lots, including part two of Dr. Bassoli's library. The catalog is available on Kolbe's site.

Ogilvie, _Medals and Coins from Bude to Mommsen_, WantItNow

I recently stumbled across Brian W. Ogilvie's “Collection, conviction, and contemplation: or, Picturing coins in early modern books, ca. 1550-1700” [27 page PDF]. Some readers of this blog will find it interesting.

Ogilvie cites some interesting sources, includng a paper collected in Medals and coins from Budé to Mommsen (1990). That book is rare! I have been looking at Internet sources for a year without discovering anyone selling it. I have never actually seen a copy although the ANA has one in their lending library. I will probably give up on getting my own and borrow the ANA's.

The first hit searching Google for the Budé to Mommsen is my request to buy a copy using eBay WantItNow. WantItNow is/was eBay's attempt to create a “reverse eBay”. Buyers enter requests for things they want. Sellers were supposed to look over the listings and respond. All of eBay's usual catagories are available, but the responses in the coin sections are quite poor. For example, in the Ancient Greek WantItNow there is only one request. A man looking for Greek coins to give to teenagers was offered a rosary necklace (for HongKong$ 28.88) and some US silver coins.

On the Chronological Sequence of the Coins of Ephesus

Barclay Head's book On the Chronological Sequence of the Coins of Ephesus was first published in 1880, by Rollin & Feuardent. British Museum keeper Head lays out his theories of when the different coin types of the city were struck.

Head's essay was first published in the Numismatic Chronicle as a two parter, in 1880 and 1881. It was reprinted in 1979 by Obol International. The original is in the public domain and Oxford's copy was digitized and can be downloaded from Archive.org and Google Books.

Two 'publishers' recently reprinted this title. BiblioBazaar issued a paperback that is $14 from Amazon on November 13th. Just a day later, BiblioLife issued a hardcover On the Chronological Sequence of the Coins of Ephesus for $22 and a paperback for $16.

It is unlikely that these books are high quality. I expect they are derived from one of the scans above and printed cheaply, perhaps at the wrong size. I wonder if these books are collectable? What a strange coincidence to see two different publishers issuing the title just a day apart, 19 years after the Obol International reprint.

Bill Daehn's website

Bill Daehn, author of an important bibliography on Greek Numismatics, has a small web site. His site includes a very useful table of Greek weight standards that has been helpful to me.

The site includes many of his articles. A good one is his Asylum article on his copy of Pinkerton's An Essay on Medals (1808) [PDF].

Pinkerton was born at Edinburgh, Scotland, on February 13, 1758 ... Pinkerton's interest in coins began as a child, when a lady, who had received an ancient Roman coin in circulation as a farthing, gave the coin to him.

If reading Daehn's essay makes you interested in Pinkerton's book both volume 1 and volume 2 can be viewed and downloaded from Google Books.

If you believe, as Daehn does, “When holding and reading an original edition, the collector feels a closer connection to the time and place in which the book was written. In comparison, the reprint feels ‘too modern,’ and part of that all-important connection is lost” you'll be happy to know that sellers on AbeBooks.com are offering Pinkerton two-volume sets, both 1st editions and the 1808 reprint, at prices ranging from $37 to $316.

$37 is actually quite a good price for a two-volume 18th century numismatic work in English with plates! I am tempted to buy it myself.

Coins auctioned by the US Postal Service

Alfredo De La Fe explains how coins stolen in the mail ended up auctioned by the USPS on the JAN blog.

Giant vacuum sucks modern coins from ancient well

An amusing BBC story (no byline) on an English Heritage operation to remove coins tossed by tourists into Clifford's Tower in York.

Claire Hogan, the tower's operations manager, said: "We last emptied the well in May 2006, although it took us nearly two years to clean, sort and count the £1,000-worth of small change in there that had accumulated over 10 years, so we have made a conscious decision to empty the well more often.

Copyright law and transient copies

A commentator on ancients.info recently tore into me for claiming for claiming that it may be infringement to copy something for personal use. It turns out that one can infringe without even making a copy!

MAI Systems Corp. v. Peak Computer, Inc. holds that copying from a computer disk into RAM infringes without permission from the copyright holder. Although there was no permanent copy made it's still considered reproducing. This is why web radio broadcasters need both a license to perform a work and a license to make “ephemeral copies”. (These laws may be based on on precedents in the 1970s regarding per-seat licensing of mainframe software.)

It may even be an infringement to tell someone how to make a transient copy without actually making one! Hacker Eric Corley (AKA “Emmanuel Goldstein”) published computer code to load DVD movies into main memory from a DVD-ROM device. This code is necessary for software engineers to write DVD player software and requires a secret key that had been a trade secret until a Norwegian teenager had figured it out. Movie studios greatly feared this code because playing a DVD is half the process to copying one. They were worried that the code published by Corley would aid bootleggers. Mr. Corley lost Universal v. Reimerdes and this case forms a precedent in New York. A similar case in California went the other way. (Often when there is a split between high courts the Supreme Court jumps in to explain things but that isn't happening here.) Lower courts must follow precedent so in New York it's probably an infringement crime to tell people how to make a transient RAM copy of even a single DVD frame.

I believe that making transient copies shouldn't be infringement. It would be ridiculous to say that holding a book in front of a mirror is infringement. Only a fool would claim that opening a book in daylight and allowing photons to bounce off the ink is an infringement. Copying into a computer's RAM is more like those activities than operating a printing press. My government disagrees with me and until that changes an infringement apparently happens every time a bootleg PDF is opened up in a PDF viewer. FTPing a file may trigger thousands of infringements as each packet stops in a different router.

Turkey jails ten for museum theft

Hurriyet contains a brief notice that former director of the Uşak Archaeological Museum Kazim Akbiyiklioglu has been sentenced to 13 years for the theft of an ancient coin and gold broach.

Nine others were given lesser sentences.

The broach is part of the Lydian treasure that was displayed in New York between 1987 and 1993. A US museum paid $1,200,000 million for the teasures, which turned out to be smuggled illegally out of Turkey. After a court battle the artifacts ended up in Uşak where 769 visitors saw them before Akbiyikoglu switched them for fakes. He later claimed that he was the victim of a supernatural curse on the objects.

(via Looting matters)

American Geophysical Union v. Texaco

Most of copyright law rests not on rules drafted by lawmakers but by interpretations made by judges. An important case is American Geophysical Union v. Texaco.

American Geophysical Union is a non-profit society for geophysicists and publishes several journals. The oil company Texaco's research center in Beacon NY had a library with three subscriptions to the Journal of Catalysis. Dr. Donald H. Chickering had photocopies made of eight papers from various issues of the Journal of Catalysis and kept the photocopies in his files.

Judge Jon O. Newman ruled that Chickering's copies were not made through fair use. Texaco infringed.

The judge didn't address if it is legal for independent researchers to photocopy. He was only talking about Texaco's researchers.

Many people feel the judge made a good call. Texaco is a rich multi-national; they need to pay the geophysicists for their journals.

Copyright law makes no distinction between rich companies and poor companies, so it's probably an infringement if a tiny company also photocopies for employee use. Many people feel OK with that too. It would be nice if a judge would rule on use by independent researchers. A legal bright line between for-profit independent researchers and gigantic public corporations would also help small organizations from knowing if they are breaking the law.

The law also makes no distinction between journals that are in-print and have sales departments and journals that went defunct many years ago. This is what I have a problem with.

I don't know a lot about catalysis but presumably the experiments in those papers can be re-recreated if necessary from the abstracts. Much numismatic evidence is unique — die pairings, overstrikes — and is needed by today's researchers. If we cannot photocopy papers then research stops. If a copyright owner isn't willing to register with the Copyright Clearance Center or even maintain a PO Box why should I respect his rights?

Some copyright holders purposely refuse to sell. For example Disney puts children's movies into the Disney Vault in the hopes of driving up sales. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about copyright holders abandoning their work and leaving it as an 'orphan', with no licensing body to take care of it.

I believe the historial sciences would benefit from orphan works legislation providing some kind of legal mechanism to allow scholars to pay for out-of-print works.

Author's Guild claims text-to-speech software is illegal

I have been too busy to write part 2 of my series on copyright law. Part 2 will be about the exciting legal case American Geophysical Union v. Texaco so you will all want to stay tuned for that.

Instead today I link to a bOING bOING post by Rob Beschizza mocking a claim by the Authors Guild that text-to-speech software infringes copyright. The scenario: a reader pays to download a Kindle book and activates the Kindle's read-out-loud feature causing a transient copy of the work to manifest as vibrations in nearby air molecules.

German police seizing coin collections?

Nathan Elkins has a response to Cultural Property Observer's post on ancient coin seizures happening in Germany.

3D Aegina stater

From the National Numismatic Museum in Athens Greece, a digital Aegina stater in 3D.

(requires QuickTime VR)

AntiquaNova replica Greek coin video

Video of Petr Sousek and Pavel Neumann of AntiquaNova striking replica Greek coins.

(via Moneta-L)

Counterfeit Coin Newsletter #11

Issue 11 of Robert Matthew's Counterfeit Coin Newsletter is up. Topics include the controversy on the recent auction of an ancient gold stater of Pergamon, a police auction for counterfeiting equipment seized from Louis Colavecchio, recent Chinese counterfeits of US coins, and counterfeit NGC and PCGS slabs.

Why is gold golden?

It turns out that the color of gold can only be explained using special relativity. Another brief article says that if relativity is ignored, gold would be silvery in color.

This isn't a new result but I hadn't heard it before.

(via reddit)

German police are seizing ancient collections

Cultural Property Observer reports with English translation on German seizures of ancient coin collections containing undocumented items.

In one case, German police seized a pensioner's entire coin collection after he bought four coins on an Internet auction site (eBay?). Apparently, unbeknown to pensioner, the seller was under some sort of police investigation related to cultural property issues.

Howgego's Ancient History from Coins

The most popular e-Book reader is the Amazon Kindle. I haven't used one. Only Seven numismatic books are available in Kindle format.

Christopher Howgego's Ancient History from Coins is available in Kindle format, and also in Microsoft Reader and Mobipocket format, Sony eBook format, and Adobe Reader format.

Why is this Howgego's book on ancient numismatics so widely available in electronic format? Almost no other books on coins are available electronically, but this one is in every online e-Book store.

I read it years ago, in dead-tree format, and thought it was pretty good. I no longer have a copy.

Eric P Newman Seminar reading list: numismatic bibliographies listed in the Greek section

(this is part 7 of a series on the ANS Seminar reading list.)

The Greek Bibliography is in Microsoft Word format. It begins by recommending the general bibliographies Numismatic Literature and Surveys of Numismatic Research.

Numismatic Literature gives English summaries of every important numismatic article published in every language. There are a few useful web resources for it. (The title makes it hard to search the Internet for it!) The ANS has a search engine for volumes 1-6 and 95-140 at http://data.numismatics.org/cgi-bin/nlsearch. This page doesn't seem to be linked to the main site any more. Harry Bass paid for the digitization and he has a page explaining the search although the links are stale. The data for volumes 144-149 are also available online.

Volumes 141-149 can be purchased from David Brown, the price is $4 for 141 and 142, $22 for 143, $40 for 144, and $50 for the others.

I purchased about 100 issues of this journal, including many duplicates, cheaply at auction. I had hoped to sell the duplicates to recoup my expense but no one wants them. (Drop me a line if you want any issues from the '70s-'90s cheap.) The volumes are worthwhile but storage is a problem. I could make room for a bibliography of ancients but that's only a fraction of each volume. At the ANS book sale I was offered a complete set back to the '40s for free and didn't take it as I lacked a way to transport it and shelves to put it on.

The Surveys of Numismatic Research are similar but I haven't actually read any. Van der Dussen sells the 1972-2001 volumes for between 29 and 127.50 euro per issue. The volumes are pretty massive. The 1966 three volume set can be had cheaply; $10 from David Brown and sometimes cheaper on eBay.

The final bibliographic item is the ANS library Dictionary Catalogue which is just a photocopy of the card catalog before it went online. Use the online version.

BMC Greek

23 of the 29 volumes of BMC Greek are available online. I've updated my BMC Greek links page with four more volume links supplied by FORVM user GAT. The new volumes are Mysia, Alexandria, Caria, and Galatia/Cappadocia/Syria. The Italy link which had been failing recently is back.

No one has yet made available Lycaonia/Isuria/Cilicia nor Lydia. The final four volumes are also not available but may still be under copyright (Phoenicia, Palestine, Arabia, and Cyrenaica).

Copyright law

US copyright law represents a bargain between creators and society. The government agrees to provide free enforcement of monopoly publishing rights for a certain number of years (currently the creator's life plus 70) to creators on top of any payment provided by readers. If the government didn't provide this benefit it would be hard for creators to sell copies of their works because unauthorized publishers could undercut the creator's own publishers.

This arrangement benefits society only when the creator makes use of the monopoly by selling the work. If the creator refuses to sell the work then the monopoly means no one can reproduce the work — an arrangement that benefits no one except used book dealers.

When the US adopted modern copyright law, in 1909, it was expensive to reproduce books. It was so expensive to set type that unless hundreds of reproductions were expected to sell it wasn't economical to reproduce a book. The invention of the photocopier (in 1938, but not available commercially until the 1960s) made it possible to reproduce single copies, but it wasn't until the founding of the Copyright Clearance Center in 1977 that creators could earn money when their works were photocopied. Today creators don't have to worry about keeping their works in print: they can merely register them with the Clearance Center.

Unfortunately very few works are registered with the Clearance Center. When a work is out-of-print and not registered with the Center it's difficult to pay the creator to copy it. So why isn't everyone registered? Many copyright holders don't know about it. Others don't feel enough users would license the work to justify the time to set up an account. Others don't even know they own the copyright. (Imagine you wrote a journal article. Do you own the copyright or does the journal? If you got hit by a bus tomorrow, would your heirs understand that they inherit your copyright and the ability to license it?)

Sometimes a work is licensed with the Clearance Center but not for the purpose you'd like. For example, the Israel Numismatic Journal is coded to direct professors wishing to photocopy classroom handouts to a PO box in Jerusalem to discuss reproduction permission. Business users aren't even given that address! If an auction house cataloger wishes to do the right thing and pay the Israel Numismatic Society to make a research photocopy the signal that they won't take the money! Clearly this is intentional. The Society has set up an account and coded it to give an address to academic users and blanket refusal to business users.

I prefer the clear prices set David Sear's Greek Coins and Their Values: five cents a page for schools, ten cents a page for businesses.

My preference for clear prices and the possibility of businesses licensing works doesn't mean anything under the law. The rightsholder makes the rules and the readers must live with it. It's clearly the right of the INS to refuse business from businesses. Yet I feel the exercise of reproduction refusal is harmful to society. Denying others a legal avenue to photocopy scientific papers does not promote the Progress of Science.

Douglas Saville describes Kolbe book auction

Yesterday's e-Sylum included a description of Kolbe's auctions 107 and 108 in New York by Douglas Saville.

Jonathan Swift's numismatic essay “A Defence of the Conduct of the People of Ireland in their Unanimous Refusal of Mr. Wood's Copper-money, &c” realized $12,000 against a $5000 estimate.

Ancient Coins Were Shaped Like Hams

Barbara Seuling's children's book Ancient Coins Were Shaped Like Hams: and Other Freaky Facts About Coins, Bills, and Counterfeiting came out in February 2008 but I was previously unaware of it. I'd like to nominate Matthew Skeens's cover art for most rediculous cover to a numismatic book for 2008.

Only $5 new from Amazon. I haven't actually seen the book; if any readers have a copy please post a mini review in the comments section.

(Why am I shilling for Amazon on the blog? I now have an Amazon Associates ID; if you order the book through the link above I get a few cents. Since joining this program two months ago I've earned $2.16.)

How creativity is being strangled by the law

The most popular post on ancients.info this week is about copyright law. I was shocked. It's a topic few care about.

Is there any interest in a series on copyright law on the blog? I'd like to start with this video of Larry Lessig at TED talking on How creativity is being strangled by the law.



Lessig's examples are about amateur remixing audio and video. In his examples, the audio and video rights holders are known but won't license for less than tens of thousands of dollars. I'm particularly interested in is remixing catalogs, pictures of ancient coins, and amateur translations where the source material is out-of-print and the rightsholder is unfindable.

Charles Davis Mail Bid Sale January 31st

Charles Davis will be holding a mail bid sale January 31st. 556 lots with over 150 lots on books of ancient coins.

Included is a complete bound first edition of SNG Copenhagen estimated at $10,000.

Sylvia Hurter has passed away

Cultural Property Observer reports that Sylvia Hurter has passed away.

She was an expert numismatist and authenticator and the former chairman of the IAPN Anti-forgery Committee. She wrote for the Bulletin on Counterfeits using her initials S.H.

Celtic Coins and the Copyright Clearance Center

The British Museum also has a reading list for numismatists. It includes a few categories missing in the ANS' seminar list, including Celtic. It's not an academic list and even includes a category "Children's Books on Coins and Paper Money".

Not included in this list, nor in the British Museum's list of numismatic publications, is Derek F. Allen's 1987 Catalogue of the Celtic coins in the British Museum. Volume I: Silver coins of the Eastern Celts and Balkan peoples. This book is worth tracking down because it is the only book on Eastern Celtic coins in English. I can't find a copy online. I recently borrowed the ANA's copy.

(A short biography of Allen says he died in 1975, a full 12 years before the book came out!)

Usually when a book becomes as rare as Allen's that's the end of it. Maybe it will turn out once or twice in an auction. You'll bid five times what the book sold for when the author was alive and be outbid. There is usually no other legal option for getting a copy. What's different about Catalogue of the Celtic coins in the British Museum. Volume I is that it's been registered with the Copyright Clearance Center. It is completely legal to make photocopies of the book for a small fee!

This is a wonderful development and I look forward to a day when all books have this option.

The CCC page for Allen's Catalogue gives the fee as nine cents a page for classroom use and 61 cents a page for general business use. I can't recall home many page are in the book, as I recall it's only about 80 pages plus about 30 plates. So figure ten bucks for collectors/scholars and $67 for coin dealers.

Ancient Rome 3D Curriculum Competition

Bruce Sterling mentions Google's Ancient Rome 3D Curriculum Competition, saying “Imagine trying to explain this development to K-12 educators from 40 years ago.”

Sorry for light posting lately... I've been busy with other stuff. Feel free to talk amongst yourselves in the comments section.

Eric P Newman Seminar reading list: the general Medieval and Islamic titles

(this is part 6 of a series on the ANS Seminar reading list. I haven't actually read any of the basic Medieval and Islamic titles so take this post with a grain of salt.)

The Medieval and Islamic general titles seems to be more available than the ancient titles.

Philip Grierson's Coins of Medieval Europe is available from Charles Davis for $75.

Grierson and Blackburn's Medieval European Coinage volume I: The Early Middle Ages can be previewed on Google Books. Amazon will sell the paperback for $89 new. The hardcover is worth much more; at least one was recently sold for $200 by Charles Davis.

P. Spufford's Money and its Use in Medieval Europe can also be previewed on Google Books. Amazon will sell a copy for $52 new with used copies for less.

Alan Stahl's Zecca: The Mint of Venice in the Middle Ages can be had for $20 from David Brown. Amazon still wants $80 for it. Google has a preview of it which surprised me. Previously ANS titles have been in snippet format. So either the ANS has given permission or the Google/rightholder suit, which settled out-of-court, is already yielding benefits.

Recommended reading are the “dinar”, “dirham” and “fals” entries in the Dictionary of the Middle Ages, a 13 volume set that costs $800. Also recommended are the “coins and coinage”, “dinar”, and “dirham” in the Encyclopedia Iranica. Some volumes of that encyclopedia are available from used Amazon starting around $70 but I don't know which volumes include these entries.

Steve Album's A Checklist of Islamic Coins (2nd ed.) is hard-to-find. Used copies of the first edition can be found for $50. Album often sells copies at NYINC for $20, so it is possible he has some but doesn't advertise them on his website http://www.stevealbum.com/.

Michael Bates, Islamic Coins (ANS Handbook 2, New York, 1982) is a complete mystery. I have never heard of ANS handbooks and they don't appear on the list of ANS publications series. The library entry says it's 52 pages plus 36 color slides. The library has sets of slides made in 1971 and 2 for Greek, Roman and Byzantine coins, numbered 1, 2 and 3, but the Islamic slides are not #4 of the Education slide program. I couldn't find an ANS Handbook 1.

The final general Islamic titles is a three part paper, “Islamic Numismatics”, in the Middle East Studies Association Bulletin from 1978 and 1979. These issues are no longer available from the publisher.

Eric P Newman Seminar reading list: the general Roman and Byzantine titles

(this is part 5 of a series on the ANS Seminar reading list. I haven't actually read any of the basic Roman and Byzantine titles so take this post with a grain of salt.)

Andrew Burnett's Coinage in the Roman World has been reprinted by Spink and is available new from Charles Davis for $38 but not in the usual online shops.

Ted Buttrey's paper "The Morgantina Excavations and the Date of the Roman Denarius" is in Morgantina Studies II: The Coins which is out-of-print but can be found in the usual online shops like ABE starting at $60. This is supposed to be a pretty important title for Republican numismatics. Before this paper (1961) different dates were assigned to the coin types. This paper proves and explains the new dating.

Ken Harl's Coinage in the Roman Economy, 300 B.C. to A.D. 700 has a preview on Google Book Search. It's in print; Amazon sells it new for $56.80.

P. D. Whitting's Byzantine Coins can be found on ABE starting at $25. Philip Grierson's Byzantine Coins is available but pricey: $295 was the cheapest I found. Amazon thinks it has a used copy for $626.

New York International Numismatic Convention

The New York International Numismatic Convention is this week. I was there on Sunday to inspect some auction lots I'm considering bidding upon. The auctions run throughout the week. The floor sales start with a $100 'preview' on Thursday. The regular show runs Friday-Sunday. Admission is $10 or $5 with coupon.

The free educational program is on Saturday. The lectures are Prue Fitts, Money as a Means of Propagranda: Visual Propoganda on Coins of the Eastern Roman Empire in the Heraclian and Isurian Dynasties; John Sallay, Technology and Numismatics (Medal Collectors of America); Howard A. Minners, The Origins of the Taler; Patrick Guillard, The French Numismatic Market: No Bailout Required; David Michaels, Address to the Troops: Adlocutio and Related Scenes on Roman Coinage, Arthur Fitts, Tudor and Stuart Propaganda: How Money Talks.

Most coins at the show look expensive because the dealers put their best coins on their tables under glass. Ask if there are any boxes of coins to look at. Doug Smith's account of a coin show is good. He is talking about a Baltimore show which is much smaller for ancients than NYINC.

Note: I hope to attend this show Friday afternoon. The rest of the week is iffy for me because of personal stuff.

Lenticular €10 coin

I recently received a €10 coin from the Netherlands whose reverse depicts Princess Catharina-Amalia of the Netherlands and her parents. The parents and baby cannot be seen at the same time. The appear when then coin is viewed from different angles, using a technique similar to lenticular printing.

The images don't look as great as the attached photo but they are really there. I think I have a silver plated base metal coin, which isn't mentioned on the Wikipedia page for Netherlands commemoratives.

I think this is the first coin featuring the technique. It was struck in 2003. A page on the Royal Dutch Mint's website goes into great detail on the marketing campaign for this coin but neglects to mention or explain the technique. The artists are Erwin Driessens and Maria Verstappen.

If anyone know the name of the multiple-image technique when applied to coin production please leave it as a comment!

Eric P Newman Seminar reading list: the general Greek titles

(this is part 4 of a series on the ANS Seminar reading list. I haven't actually read any of the basic Greek titles so take this post with a grain of salt.)

Coinage in the Greek World has been reprinted by Spink for with new copies for £20. Charles Davis sells it in the USA. Surprisingly this book is totally unavailable new from the usual online bookstores. The first edition can be found used for under $40.

Jenkins was reprinted again in 2004 and that edition can be obtained new from the same dealers ($65 from Charles Davis). Used copies available under $50.

I've never seen the Kraay, Kroll, or Robinson papers but Journal of Hellenic Studies and the American Journal of Archaeology are available in most research libraries. JSTOR will sell “Dating the Earliest Coins of Athens, Corinth, and Aegina” for $10. Supposedly JSTOR has the Journal of Hellenic Studies but JSTOR wouldn't let me search for it as I lack an account!

The 1937 first edition Royal Greek Portrait Coins is seems widely available used for $6 plus; there is also a Durst reprint that is a little more.

Droit de suite

Europe gives artists a resale right called Droit de suite. Every time a painting is sold, the artist (and sometimes heirs after the artist death) receives a royalty of a few percent.

(More details on Droit de suite at Patry's blog).

If a system similar to Droit de suite was in place for ancient coins perhaps some source countries might come to believe that a trade in ancient coins is good for national pride?

I suspect that many of the restrictions on the coin trade were the result of source countries feeling left out of the market, and not a result of a strong national feeling about coins as cultural property. Here is a quote from Burton Berry's Numismatic Biography:

By the late 1950s, a new a strong trend was developing the
concerned every collector of ancient coins living in the Near East. First, prices were rising rapidly. Coins that I had purchased on the 1930s for $50 each were selling in public auctions in Switzerland for $1000.... And, more important, the attitude in the Near Eastern countries toward collectors was changing. Where formerly everybody was eager to help the foreign collector, people now were becoming suspecious, and even envious, that you, the foreign collector, saw value in objects in which they saw no value. Newspapers began to give prominence to stories of inflated prices that some antique objects brought abroad, and it was then but a step to accuse foreigners of carrying off the wealth of a nation! Certainly, there is a genuine grievance where newly discovered works of art are exported without authorization or where farmers are encouraged to dig for treasure on archeological sites on their land.... Many old friends who were officials had retired, and their replacements, regardless of their private feelings, were to this
new trend and found it expedient to go along with it.

Coins have never had a 'resale right' or tax sent directly to the creator, so at first it may seem rediculous to send money to the current government of Egypt whenever a Roman Egyptian coin is sold. Yet paintings didn't start out with a Droit de suite right either but the law is strangely popular and now covers California! Perhaps a new tax on antiquities, which could be called a 'right', would be beneficial to both collectors and source countries?

Vote for my web site on FORVM

My web site, http://snible.org/coins/, is a finalist for FORVM's 2008 Numismatic Excellence award. Click here to vote for up to three sites from a list of nine ancient coin sites.

I don't know if this blog is considered part of my site. Definitely included is the Digital Historia Numorum with it's links to Muensterberg's book on magistrates, the Christodoulous the Counterfeiter and other transcriptions of books on fakes, and a few articles I wrote on my gorgon collection. Probably the public domain hi-res ancient Greek maps are part of the site too.

Adam Savage on collecting, obsession, reproductions, and bronze casting

Adam Savage (host of TV's MythBusters) on his obsession with collecting, sculpting replica dodo birds, The Maltese Falcon, and bronze casting.


(17 minute video)

Imperial Coins Newsletter vol. 2

The latest Imperial Coins Newsletter includes interesting articles. Curtis Clay's piece on overstruck reverses is quite interesting. I also enjoyed Mark Passehl's article on Marcus Fonteius.

Translation of Numismatic Terms

Parthia.com has created a very nice translations of numismatic terms page. The languages are English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, and Dutch.

The site is asking for translation help for a few terms.

Eric P Newman Seminar reading list: the ancients titles

(this is part 3 of a series on the ANS Seminar reading list.)

The first ancients title on the general list is Hacksilber to Coinage. It's in print, $50, but I think ANS members get a discount on ANS titles from David Brown Books. I I haven't read my copy but I flipped through it and it's good! (There is a good short description on the David Brown page.)

Next is an 11 page paper by Teresa Clay, "Metallurgy and Metallography in Numismatics." Hopefully your local University library has a good selection of Italian-language classics journals because thats the only apperance of this paper. I've never seen it.

Next are two hard-to-find books in French, Numismatique antique. Problèmes et méthodes edited by Tony Hackens and others, and Georges Le Rider, La naissance de la monnaie: pratiques monétaires de l'Orient ancien. The le Rider was reviewed by Bryn Mawr Classical Review.

George MacDonald's 70 page paper "The Original Significance of the Inscriptions on Ancient Coins" looks interesting. It's only appearance is in the 1910 issue of the Memoires du Congrès International de Numismatique. Good luck finding that! MacDonald also wrote Coin Types: Their Origin and Development; a 275 page book which is easy to find reprinted for under $20. Perhaps this is the follow-up? I read Coin Types but wasn't super-impressed with it. It felt more like a transcribed lecture than a book.

Next is Milne, Greek and Roman Coins and the Study of History which I've never seen but is easy-to-get, about $12+ for the 1939 original or the Obol reprint.

The final general / ancient title is C. H. V. Sutherland's 29 page Ancient Numismatics: A Brief Introduction. I've never seen it but AbeBooks reports a copy in Very Good at $26. It's an ANS publication. Google only has it in Snippet View which is quite irritating! (If anyone at the ANS is reading this, please note that Google will let you promote your books for free. There could be a nice free preview for readers with optional revenue-generating ads.) A footnote in Striking New Images: Roman Imperial Coinage and The New Testament World cites the Brief Introduction regarding the debate among classicists and historians about the value of numismatic evidence. Perhaps that is the subject of this mini-book?

Eric P Newman Seminar reading list: the general titles

(this is part 2 of a series on the ANS Seminar reading list.)

The first general title on the general list is about numismatic libraries. It's by former ANS librarian Frank Campbell: “Numismatic Bibliography and Libraries” from the Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science. Amazon sells the Encyclopedia for $2065 but many libraries have it.

Google Books offers a preview that includes some of Frank's article.

Numismatics International reprinted Frank's essay. I purchased my copy from them. The Numismatics International web site is still offering the book for $5.

Much of the essay covers books that were significant when published starting with the little-used classics of the 16th century. There is also a list of research libraries with strong numismatic content. I recommending the NI reprint, especially for readers with an interest in the history of Numismatics who haven't read Kolbe's Studies in the History of Numismatic Literature v. 1-2.

I've never seen the rest of the general titles. The Casey can be found easily for $10-$20 online. Charles Davis is selling the Cooper for $275. Sellers on AbeBooks in various states of denial are selling the Grierson from $25 to $85. Both books containing Jones essay can be found used at high prices — a library might be a better alternative. The Morrisson seems unobtainable and in few libraries. The Williams is of a scarce kind of numismatic books — it's in print! (possibly as a second edition?) Amazon offers an online preview (click 'Look inside this book'). There are also many used copies of the first printing in the usual places starting at about $2.50.

Reading list for the Eric P. Newman Graduate Seminar in Numismatics

The American Numismatic Society offers a yearly eight week course in numismatics to graduate students in art history, textual studies, and archaeology. The Seminar is designed to take an expert in a field related to numismatics and make that person an expert in numismatics capable of doing coin research.

ANS members can get permission to sit in on some of the lectures. The ones I attended were quite good!

A numismatic researcher needs to understand the techniques of numismatics and be able to find out what other scholars have written on the subject. There is very little written on how to do good numismatic research. You won't find courses at your local college explaining how to use Clain-Stefanelli's Numismatic Bibliography. Your local library probably doesn't even have it! How does a collector who isn't a graduate student learn to navigate numismatic literature?

Take a look at the Seminar reading lists. The lists reveal the books the ANS curators feel provide the numismatic background to get started with serious research.

The general reading list provides the foundation. It begins with two bibliographies.

The very first book on the list is Clain-Stefanelli's Numismatic Bibliography. This book is small but very thick — 1848 pages! It costs about $200 used (there are two copies on VCoins now). I use it less now that the ANS library catalog and Google books are around but still consult it regularly.

The next book is Grierson's Bibliographie numismatique. I've never seen one in person. It's in French. There are two editions but I don't know the difference. Charles Davis describes a copy he has for sale as “A necessary supplement to Clain-Stefanelli with considerably more attention to auction catalogues.” I've avoided this title because I don't easily read French. (If any readers who don't read French find it useful please let me know. There are three copies on VCoins (one is part of a lot) for between $35 and $75, and others on AbeBooks.com.

Not included in the ANS' list of bibliographies is Kroh's Ancient Coin Reference Reviews. Kroh's cheap book ($25) is not a scholarly bibliography but useful for independent scholars on a budget because Kroh attempts to discuss the usefulness, price, and availability of the references. (Unfortunately Kroh's availability and pricing information is now two decades out-of-date.)

There are many more gems on the ANS lists, as well as intriguing works I've never seen, so... to be continued...

January New York Sale

The New York Sale catalog is up. 474 ancient coins. Many Russian coins and very strong in Russian and Soviet military decorations.

The ANS Library: 150 Years of Learning

The American Numismatic Society in New York has a mini-exhibit on numismatic books, “The American Numismatic Society Library: 150 Years of Learning”, open during ANS hours through February 2009.

Photo-timestamp arrives!

Photo-timestamp arrives. The vendor is Numismatic Guaranty Corporation (NGC) using technology from Image Fortress.

Numismatic Guaranty Corporation, the world's leading independent coin certification and grading service, has selected Image Fortress Corporation's DigitalFortress digital archiving service as the platform for NGC's online coin catalog, the first online photographic catalog of certified and graded collectible coins. DigitalFortress service was selected by NGC because of DigitalFortress' unique ability to provide trustworthy archiving of all digital files, which insures files archived within DigitalFortress are unalterable and tamper-proof.

One of the significant innovations introduced by NGC in their online catalog is the application of the DigitalFortress feature that digitally seals and time stamps every archived file, in this case the photographs of all coins being graded by NGC.

The press release goes on to say that over one million coin photos have already been made tamper-proof by DigitalFortress. NGC will let normal users start slabbing ancients on January 1st. I don't know the price; NGC is charging $16 for US non-gold coins worth under $300 and $125 for US coins valued below $100,000.

I still believe the cheap (<10 cents per coin) photo-only service that I proposed in my Celator editorial, without grading or slabbing, is economically viable.

More vendors are entering the timestamp market outside numismatics. A recent editorial by Jonathan Baily, “Is Copyright Non-Repudiation Worthwhile”, says several new non-repudiation vendors recently opened web sites.

Internet Archive makes it too difficult to report copyright violations

The Internet Archive's copyright policy provides a mechanism for reporting copyright infringement. The report must include a signed statement by the copyright holder!

I couldn't find a mechanism for the general public to report copyright infringement. The public can report 'errors' but perhaps no one reads them — I reported some copyright date errors and got no response.

Recently someone scanned some volumes of Roman Imperial Coinage (RIC) but mis-identified the copyright date, allowing works that I believe are still in copyright to be downloaded as large PDF files. Nearly 200 people have downloaded them. This could open the Archive up to big problems if the copyright holder notices.

I'm surprised the Archive makes it so difficult for the public to report potentially expensive problems.

New book on the Athenian Dekadrachm

The ANS is offering The Athenian Decadrachm, a new book by Wolfgang Fischer-Bossert, at a pre-publication price of $50. List price will be $95.

The book will include a die-study of forty genuine decadrachms. The book also promises a full account of forgeries including ninety examples. I'm hoping for a longer telling of the story of how the British Museum acquired the Christodoulous fake.

(Mark Jones (Fake? The Art of Deception) wrote “[George Hill] spotted it, it is said, at a social function, nestling in the bosom of an attractive Greek lady...”)

I encourage non-members join the ANS to obtain the $45 pre-order discount.

What Do Museums Have That Sporting Events Don’t?

Freakonomics asks “What Do Museums Have That Sporting Events Don’t?”

About 140 million people in the U.S. will attend a major-league sporting event this year, according to this NPR article.

But as the same article says, museums will draw about 850 million attendees this year.

So why do more people make trips to museums than to sports games? ...

Bookshelf for an ever-expanding collection

Nina and Isabel Farsen Schöllhammer have invented a bookshelf that accomodates a growing collection!

(via bOING bOING)

The links above also lead to an 'infinite' bookcase by designer Job Koelewijn.

NCIC: Numismatic Crime Information Center

A former Chief of Police has created numismaticcrimes.org, an information center for law enforcement, dealers and collectors of coins. The site says NCIC has been active since 1987. The web site has only been up for two years and seems little-known.

The news section lists robberies, provides tips, and there is also a warning that a coin thief has escaped from federal prison!

The resources section includes forms for collectors to use when inventorying collections and guides for law enforcement illustrating numismatic items like slabs, Whitman folders and 2x2s. There is a way to report numismatic crimes.

Those interested in helping law enforcement can fill out a form to become a Numismatic Expert for their region.

Identifying Roman coins

SCOTVS CAPITIS explains how to attribute worn Roman coins.

The Illicit Numismatic Trade in Argentina

It's not antiquities! A report by Anne Szustek in Finding Dulcinea quotes heavily from Uki Goni's story in last week's Time: “Spare Change? There's None in Buenos Aires”.

Goni claims there is no simple explanation for the coin shortage but Szustek points out that there is more copper value in the coins than face value.

A black market has developed to sell coins at a profit to small business owners. Stores that can't afford to buy coins are giving their customers candy instead of change.

Economic model explains bids on ancient coinage?

Professor J. Edward Taylor of UC Davis analyzed auction prices for Alexander the Great tetradrachms in his paper Valuing the Numismatic Legacy of Alexander the Great (2007).

... This paper uses a hedonic price modeling approach to analyze auction prices of the major coin type of Alexander the Great. The findings make it possible to identify the effects of specific coin characteristics on realized auction prices, sellers’ reservation prices (auction price estimates), discrepancies between realized and estimated prices, and the variability of auction prices around predicted prices, or auction price surprise.

...

By far the most important factors determining the realized auction price of Alexander tetradrachms are the grade and year of striking. A condition of “extra fine” or higher adds an estimated $339, or 78.7%, to the coin price .... If the coin is both “extra fine” and struck during Alexander’s lifetime, an additional premium of $1,034 (240.4%) is added. A descriptive of “rare” or “scarce” is associated with an increase in realized price of $591 (137.4%), “toned” with an increase of $133 (31.0%), and other positive traits, with an increase of $254 (59.0%).

...

If bidders value coin traits in the same way that the auction house does, there will be a one-to-one correspondence between the estimated and realized price, and the effect of all coin characteristics, controlling for this estimated price, will be nil. A positive effect of a given trait would imply that bidders place a higher value on the trait than the auction house, and the trait has an effect on the realized price that is not reflected in the dealer’s price estimate....

Professor Taylor used data from CoinArchives.com to support his conclusions. He also calculates that Alexander's tets appreciated by 8.9% between 2001 and 2006.

The paper only analyzes characteristics supported by the auction text. Many characteristics important to collectors, like Herakles having a handsome appearance or a recognizable lion skin, are not discussed.

Dubious coins from Himera

Italian eBayer sicilgrecheromane recently offered some deceptive bronze Himera replicas as replicas (250323372246, 250322899554, and 250322898559) but later cancelled all bids “because of an error in the minimum bid or reserve amount”.

Himera gorgon bronzes with standing man reverse type are very rare; John E. van Wielink's excellent Magna Graecia Coins illustrates the Calciati plate coin.

Recently an Italian dealer's list, linked from SixBid.com, included an example of the type. I wonder if that specimen is genuine? The same auction house includes another Himera bronze that is a match for two fakes illustrated in Sayles' Classical Deception (page 54).

If Richard Branson Ran GM

(non-numismatic post)

I grew up outside Detroit and know how important the automakers are. The executives are out of touch. The blog Graduated Taste suggests what would be happening if Richard Branson ran GM.