Where Do you Recommend I Start?

[Scott H2]

First of all, I'm pretty attracted to it all. I was wondering how some of you guys started with collecting medieval coins. I'm mostly interested in really fascinating and obscure coins. Rarity is an attraction, just for the fact that it is rare and may be hard to ever find again. I also love collecting provenance. I do that with all of my 19th century tokens, taking pride in adding things to my collection that were also thought attractive to pioneers before me.

I'm thinking of getting a sample of medieval coins to get me started and see what is most attractive to me. Right now I found several pieces on forum that are quite appealing. My budget is pretty tight though, between $20-60 each coin and only 2-3 coins at a time. I'm hopeful though because I am an historian by trade (19th century North America) and these do look quite ignored by the general numismatic community.

So far I've found the following available at Forum quite appealing:

Crusaders, Frankish Greece, Principality of Achaea, Robert of Taranto, 1333 - 1364

Republic of Venice, Doge Antonio Venier, 21 October 1382 - 23 November 1400

Hungary, Ferdinand I, 1526 - 1564

Bohemia, John (the Blind) of Luxembourg, 1310 - 1346

[St. George's Collection]

There are coins in your budget.

I would say good options include:
Crusader coins
French feudal coins (may have to stretch your budget a tad)
English Plantagenet sterlings (may have to stretch your budget here as well)
Hungarian denars
Polish, Lithuanian, and Bohemian coinage (an area I know nothing about)
Venetian grossi (also may have to stretch for these)

What makes collecting these things difficult are the lack of English language references (besides for the English coins of course), and in many cases the references are hard to track down.  There are fakes too, but with the low price many of these coins command, they are not that heavily faked.

[Scott H2]

Thanks. I'm looking forward to the challenge. I think I'll stick to the crusader coins because there's quite a bit of variety in there between the different crusader states and the opposing Islamic coins. I think it makes a great story.