I bought the book ...

[Mycenae]

Now can I buy some coins?

[ickster]

Now that's funny!

Nice set of books there. Can you afford coins now? 

[Akropolis]

Ancient Greek coins, yes.
PeteB

[quadrans]

I agree    

Q.

[Canaan]

What is funny, that each time I want to buy a book of ancient coins, I do not I just say to my self I will buy a decent coin for this amount and do so!!!

[dougsmit]

Give this set a year and come back with a report on how you feel you have benefited from the 10k+ pages in this set.  BMC may not be the easiest set to use and the online corpus of images beats anything I have seen in hardcover but the real problem with a purchase like this may be finding the time to use all that data to your advantage. I hope you find coins in the books that you did not know existed and are lucky enough to find specimens of those same ones. 

I suspect, if you decide the set was a mistake as educational material that they will resell well. 

[stevex6]

very cool set of books ... congrats

[cicerokid]

What are they?

What do they say?

How upto date are they?

Show us a page or two of the Athens News Style coinage and I can judge them for myself.

Thanks

Cic

[n.igma]

What are they?
British Museum Catalog of Greek Coins Complete set in 29 Volumes Forni Reprints

What do they say?
The British Museum published most of its massive collection of Greek coins in 29 volumes from 1873-1929. The series, called BMC Greek, is the largest collection of ancient Greek coins ever published.

How up to date are they?
Poole, Reginald S., Barclay V. Head, and George F. Hill, eds. A catalogue of Greek coins in the British Museum, Forni reprint ed. of original 29 vols. 1976. Hardbound. 10,688 pages, 952 plates, 15 fold-out color maps, indices.


Incompletely available online here (including plates)  ... http://snible.org/coins/bmc/

Show us a page or two of the Athens News Style coinage and I can judge them for myself....
http://snible.org/coins/bmc/attica/XII.jpg
http://snible.org/coins/bmc/attica/XIII.jpg

[cicerokid]

Thanks for that n.igma.

So except for photographs they are completely out of date.

And all the acquisitions from 1929 no doubt you will have to find in the Numismatic Chronicle since then

I don't think The BM gets Greek coins anymore since 2014 unless it has a pre- 1970 provenance so at least it has come practically to a halt.

Once again thanks, and the books, no thanks!

Cic

[Meepzorp]

Hi folks,

n is correct. As soon as I looked at the photo, I knew what they were. I have a few volumes myself. Yes, they are old and may be somewhat out of date. But they are very comprehensive, which is a good trait for a beginner.

Meepzorp

[Mycenae]

Actually I'm hoping this gives me the priviledge to buy 29 coins, which is probably a couple years worth for me. I think it will be fun to see what I can attribute myself from this set. Obviously there's much more and perhaps better information online, but there's supposed to be some fun in this hobby too, right? 

[dougsmit]

It might help to practice with coins for which you already have the BMC number just to get a feel for the layout.  I find it a great help if you already know a lot about the coin.  Remember this is a catalog of a collection so there are many items they don't have and many they have in multiples with listings giving the types as 'Similar'.  They seem to have more dekadrachms than tiny minors.  Measurements are given in inches but most of us now think of coins in millimeters.  This sort of thing is why I asked for a one year update on how you feel about the value of the set to your hobby.