Software from COINS

I've written before about The COINS Project (Combat On-Line Illegal Numismatic Sales), a European Union sponsored effort “to enable the traceability of cultural heritage objects”. The project is developing “technologies aimed at allowing permanent identification and traceability of coins”.

COINS recently released software that attempts to compare and match coin photos against databases of coin photos. The newly released software comes in several pieces.

The key pieces are the Image Recognition Tool, said to be able to match a photograph against a database of coins, and the Shape Matching Package, which is apparently also for matching photos.

There is also a a web spider “to discover and identify stolen coins illegally sold on the internet” based on the open-source search engine Nutch. The spider comes with source code. It should robotically download all image files on a site and compare them against the database of coins. (My first reading of the search code did not impress me. I found code that looks for pages containing the word 'coin' or 'moneta' but I didn't find code to invoke image processing.) There is a user interface, which can be previewed here, for conducting simple searches of a coin database. For example, enter 'Alexander' in the simple query box, or 'eagle' in the iconographic query box. This Flash-based web interface is nothing special, and the spider's ability to search for stolen coins is only as effective as the photo-matching capabilities powering it.

A good image recognizer for ancient coins would be quite useful. It probably wouldn't help much to find particular categories of cultural property, such as ancient Cypriot and Chinese coins, as these are usually sold with descriptive text making photo recognition superfluous. Recognition technology would be useful to detectives for particular stolen coins and for computer-assisted die studies by numismatists.

I downloaded COINS' Image Recognition Tool (IRT) and loaded it with a database of 80 fake coins from my own photo-file. Although the IRT can compare images in popular formats such as JPEG the database only accepts greyscale TIFF files. I used Pierre Gougelet's free XnView to convert color JPEG files to greyscale TIFF.

I queried IRT using a fake image that wasn't in the database. I chose a cast fake Himera bronze, a type which gets past many dealers despite having been published as false in Wayne Sayles' Classical Deception. I had several of fakes from the same forger's mold in my database. The software coughed up five possible matches, with the highest being another coin of this type! (The other offered matches made little sense and were ranked poorly by the software.)

That seems like impressive performance. However, my database is small. Only 43 coins, or about half of the 80 coin database, correctly segmented as round. The other half of samples weren't exacted from the patterned background. Backgrounds that a human wouldn't even see, such as a finger, are not detected as expected by IRT.



The 4 non-zero matches returned in my first try represent 10% of the 43 coins whose edges were detected. Obviously a matcher that thinks 10% of the database matches a particular specimen is not yet trustworthy enough to assist law enforcement. Furthermore, the coin I first checked is a cast fake, so the geometry of the edge should help the software to detect matches more easily.

Oddly, the edge geometry didn't play a role. Although the correct match was found, the system believed a 60 degree rotation was needed. Actually the coins had the same orientation! (The picture at the top of this post is of this match.)

I tried genuine coins of different types than the fakes and got many false positives. The strength of the match is reported by IRT in the 'Matches' field. The two identical casts got 17 matches; a Ptolemaic bronze got 8 matches a shipping envelop with an eBay logo. I don't know what number is considered by the COINS scientists to be a good match.


I've just started playing with this software. I will try the Shape Matching Package next and report here on its accuracy. I invite other collectors experimenting with this software leave a comment on this post describing your success or failure matching coins using COINS' tools.

Ron Landis' Athenian dekadrachm

American engraver Ron Landis is well known in hobo nickel circles but his replicas of ancient coins have attracted little attention. I could not find his Athenian dekadrachm replica in Fischer-Bossert's The Athenian Decadrachm.

Landis engraved dies for Athenian dekadrachms, tetradrachms, and didrachms. According to Dr. Lawrence J. Lee World Coins & Medals, Landis' company Gallery Mint Museum minted quantities “in the upper hundreds” (I believe in 2000). In 2007 Lee's company restruck “no more than 100 of any denomination”.

The Gallery Mint Museum closed in 2005. Photos of Landis and the manufacturing equipment can be seen at Arkansas Road Stories.

At least one “dekadrachm” was struck in gold, weighing 3.4 troy oz (or 106g!)

Ron Landis apparently described his engraving technique in “Hand engraving and die sinking”, published by the ANS in Coinage of the Americas Conference: The medal in America (vol. 2, 1997). (Has anyone seen this? I do not have a copy.)



UPDATE: Dr. Wolfgang Fischer-Bossert wrote to remind us that his book does not include fantasies that are neither dangerous nor meant to deceive.

BMC Arabia

George Hill's BMC Arabia, the Arabian Greek coins in the British Museum collection, has been scanned and is available for download from the Internet Archive (formerly the Million Book Project).

(via Digital Library NUMIS)

I'm surprised they put this up; George Hill died 60 years ago and thus his works are not public domain in the UK, and since the book was never published in the USA the law binds servers here to UK rules.

Antique coin forger sentenced to six months jail

The London Metropolitan Police report that David Hutchings, 43, unemployed of Cross Street, Nuneaton, Warwickshire, plead guilty at Warwick Crown Court on March 16, 2009.

... Hutchings claimed to be an avid metal detectorist who had found the coins at various times and locations....

Hutchings' defence throughout police interviews and at court, was that he bought the coins from two dealers 'Gary and Steve' believing they were all genuine. However, he was unable to identify either dealers whereabouts.

Also found at Hutchings' home address during the search were a number of real coins, believed to have been used as a base for test striking during the manufacture of some of the fake coins.

Experts from the British Museum and Fitzwilliam Museum assessed the coins recovered as part of this case and concluded that all had either been manufactured by casting in a mould or struck using forged dies.

Detective Constable Ian Lawson from the Met's Art & Antiques Unit said: "Whilst the overall value of these coins is relatively low, the level of deception and harm Hutchings has caused the individuals and businesses embroiled in his lies is significant.

(Via a post by Dave Welsh on Unidroit-L and Ancientartifacts.)

Found in the crop of a chicken

John Hooker posted on Moneta-L the story of a Celtic coin found in the crop of a chicken.

(The crop is a pouch in a bird's neck that temporarily stores food.)

The chicken came from Iceni territory, but the coin is Catuvellauni perhaps it ate the coin while visiting a poultry show in Hertfordshire?

Artifact forgery

An article by John Timmer on Ars Techica discusses the recent article, Forging Ahead, by Charles Stanish in Archaeology.

Charles Stanish writes

In an antiquities store in La Paz, I recently saw about four shelves of supposed Tiwanaku (ca. A.D. 400-1000) pottery. I told the owner that most were fakes and she became irritated and called me a liar. So I simply touched one at a time, saying "fake," "real," "real from Tiwanaku," "fake," "fake made by Eugenio in Fuerabamba," and so forth. She paused for a moment, pulled one down that I said was real, and told me that it was also a fake. I congratulated her on the fact that her fakes were getting better and she just smiled. My mistake is an instance of what San Francisco State University archaeologist Karen Olsen Bruhns has identified as a very real problem—the experts who study the objects are sometimes being trained on fakes. As a result, they may authenticate pieces that are not real.

The article mostly discusses South American antiquities. There is nothing about coins.

Google's patent on an improvement in book scanning

Maureen Clements blogs about Google's patent on book scanning. Google shines infrared light on the pages; open the brightness of the reflected light can be used to determine the angle for that part of the page.

My earlier post on this subject: Book Fold Coorection.

(via bOING bOING)

Sports collectable authentication

John Branch covers baseball authentication for The New York Times:

Nothing is too mundane to be authenticated, if deemed potentially valuable. Cans of insect repellent used to combat the midges that swarmed the 2007 playoffs in Cleveland were authenticated. So were urinals pulled from the old Busch Stadium in St. Louis and office equipment from since-razed Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia. The Phillies are cutting the clubhouse carpet from last season into authenticated 18-by-24-inch mats.

...

About three million items have been authenticated by M.L.B. since 2001.

...

With Yankee Stadium emptied after the opening 10-2 loss to Cleveland, Lubrano watched groundskeepers shovel dirt from the mound and home plate into five-gallon buckets. Lubrano sealed the lids with tape, then stuck holograms on each bucket, lid and seal. The dirt will be divided into small containers at a warehouse, in front of an authenticator.

The article doesn't mention what happens to the dirt. It's put into “Infield Dirt coins”.

(via Market Design and Marginal Revolution.)

Pergamon tetradrachms

This stater of Pergamon has a small Medusa head in the right field. The ΠΕΡ monogram in the left field provides the attribution.

This coin is large, 27mm, and the Medusa head is about 5mm across. I recall F.S. Kleiner & S.P. Noe (The Early Cistophoric Coinage (1977)) date tetradrachms with this symbol to 135-128 BC. I suspect the Medusa head symbol is very scarce. There are none on CoinArchives and this is the only one I was able to spot on eBay. This specimen is reputedly from a 1995 Empire Coins list but I haven't been able to verify.

I don't know if anyone has speculated on the meanings of the symbols on these tetradrachms. I don't have my own copy of Kleiner-Noe but they did not speculate on the Medusa head.

I suspect the Medusa head symbol is related to the head on the very rare Medusa tetradrachms usually attributed to Pergamon.

This coin, which is not in my collection, is the largest silver coin made by the Greeks depicting Medusa (by size; the weight is no greater than the archaic Athenian Wappenmuenzen).

Those tetradrachms, of which only three are known (in Copenhagen, Paris, and the BM), have the inscription ΑΘΗΝΑΣ / ΝΙΚΗΦΟΡΟΥ. Although only three are known mystery of the attribution and the magnificence of the engraving has inspired several articles on them and much creative thinking.

Antonia S. Faita (“The Medusa-Athena Nikephoros Coin from Pergamon”, Athena in the Classical World (2001) argues the balls on Athena, which previous writers believed were female breasts, actually represent the cities of an economic union. She writes “Athena Nikephoros ... wears an apron with seven balls, the largest one in the centre. Her left hand holds a branch with seven leafy shoots. The balls could not possibly have represented breasts, symbols of a fertility cult, as they lack the most important element of fertility, the nipples. The absence of these spherical globes from representations of Athena Nikephoros on coins dated to the Roman period clearly indicates that the globes were not depicted on the goddess’s cult statue. The globes on Athena’s pinafore are placed on an apron tied around her waist far to low to be considered breasts. The equal number of balls and shoots may well mean they alluded to the same idea.” ... “The central ball on the goddess’s apron, being the largest, represented the capital Pergamon, the seat of Attalid power; the other six, the remaining cities issuing cistophoroi.”

Paper money into art

I promise to get back to posting pictures of ancient coins, but in the meantime...

Mark Wagner makes dollar bill collages.

... In the studio we keep hoppers of bills separated into parts to use piece by piece as well as binders of prepared texture swatches and collaged passages to add wholesale. I love all the process. For some of the collages we track how many scraps of paper are glued down. I see that sort of accounting as an interesting extension of the material. When “Liberty” is complete, for example, we’ll be able give statistics on each of her 13 panels individually, and also say that the whole thing took 1234 bills cut into 54,234 pieces, or whatever, and here’s all the scraps we didn’t use.

(via Freakonomics Blog).

Publishers don't know what rights they have

Mike Shatzkin blogs about a serious issue for big publishers, their inability to remember what they have the rights to publish. (via TeleRead).

I ran into this when I wanted to 'reprint', on my web site, Admiral Dodson's COINage articles 'Counterfeits I Have Known'. COINage graciously gave me permission to reprint the text, but not the pictures. COINage didn't know if it had the right to let me do that! Luckily the photographer, the famous Ken Bresset, allowed me to use his pictures of the fakes. (I did not attempt to contact the Athens Police Department for permission to use the crime scene photos, nor the nephew of Christodoulos who engraved the fakes.)

Last year Google settled with the Author's Guild. The Guild agreed not to sue Google for publishing works as long as Google tries to get money to authors. This sounds great, but it's being challenged by Consumer Watchdog who claims that it isn't fair for Google to be the only company immune from Authors Guild lawsuits. It's not clear to me what Consumer Watchdog wants. Do they want the Authors Guild to offer a program where companies can pay not to be sued by the Guild? Google is still on the hook for lawsuits, but supposedly no one other than the Guild can mount a credible lawsuit.

India seeks new Rupee symbol

A BBC story (one month old) by Kathryn Westcott reports on India's search for an new recognizable currency symbol for the Rupee.

India would not want a symbol that looked bad when it was turned upside down, [Jasmine Montgomery of design consultancy FutureBrand] says - "like someone's bottom," for example.

Wikipedia reports that there are already several Rupee signs, including ₨ (that's one symbol in Unicode, not an R followed by a p) and रू. The symbol रू confuses me; I don't know how to look it up; perhaps it is the “devanagari letter ra” followed by the “devanagari vowel sign uu”.

Unicode includes other varients like ৳ the Bengali Rupee symbol.

The Economic Times lets the reader vote from 19 choices. All of those choices look something like the Latin letter R. I think India could assert its new status as an economic power house by not bowing to European fonts and insist on making the West use a two-character glyph from an Indian font: रू.

CNG 81 Auction up

CNG Mail Bid Sale 81 is up on the CNG home page. Over 2000 ancient coins, including 921 Peloponnesian lots called BCD Peloponnesos II. Electronic Auction 209 is also up, with nearly 500 lots of ancients.

“Older” (1970s) struck counterfeits

F. Michael Fazzari's short article “Counterfeiters and Authenticators Do Battle” from Numismatic News discusses the characteristics of fakes struck from transfer dies.

... readers old enough to remember in 1975 how well the fakers could replicate the tiny die polish lines found on genuine coins would be astounded by today's work.

Recommended!

cgb.fr Monnaies 38 catalog up

The cgb.fr auction catalog Monnaies 38 is up. 1705 lots, including this unique stater from Phaphos, ex Santa Barbara Museum Collection.

LHS auction 103 catalog up

The catalog for LHS auction 103 is up. 145 Greek Lots, 99 Roman, 6 Celtic.

A highlight, for me, is lot 96, a rare gorgon stater from Melos. Most Greek coins with gorgoneions are small but this weights over 14 grams. Unfortunately, the estimate of CHF10000 means I'm out of the running this time around.

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!