Example with this one:
https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=10617942
if i cant search on internet i cant identify it. Is there a quick way to see on book or other the types and how recognyze area?
That's a
good example. If you supplement a book with online research together, that can be worthwhile.
Victor is right, if you're going to have one book (or pair of books) on
Greek coins, you can't go wrong starting with
Sear's
Greek Coins and Their Values. But it will only get you so far.
Here's what you would find in this situation (your example coin + that book):
[SEE ATTACHMENT]
You'll
flip through the pages and recognize that the coin looks like Number 368 [
corr. 366]:
EDIT:
Actually, mistake in the illustration, it should say "366" not "368", that is an "AR Didrachm" not "AV Stater". So, if you recognized
Sear's mistake (I didn't at first), you'd be able to ID it as an AR
Didrachm from
Calabria Tarentum, with estimated
price of 120 GBP (in 1978; I don't know if
Sear updated the prices in later editions, there's at least a 2000 ed.). The
price is too old to really be useful, but at least now you know the coin is from
Calabria, Tarentum (or "Taras") and what
denomination. You could then use your phone or whatever to look up other examples of Silver Didrachm-Nomos that are for sale or have sold at
auction. (This one was auctioned with a starting bid for 300 Euros but went unsold; to me it looks like a possible
fourree or
plated ancient
counterfeit, but that would've been a reasonable starting
price for a solid silver example.)
In that case, you could
search online and find the following sold coins (13 total examples across four kinds of sales) and extrapolate reasonable prices:
[LINK]The bigger challenge is that, unless you already have experience looking at and identifying lots of
Greek coins (or at least the kind of coins you're trying to buy), you will only be able to identify them in the most general possible terms. If you can only get as far as city,
denomination, and general
type, what seem like small differences in
type can
still make huge differences for prices. (Consider the
price range, for example, for one fairly narrow category of coins, 5th century Tetradrachms with Arethousa reverses from
Syracuse, for which
Sear or any general reference only ID's a few
types:
[LINK].)
I do highly recommend by
Sear (and possibly other volumes). In some cases it would surely be useful, but anything you get is going to have limits. It takes a while to become familiar with a wide range of
Greek coins, but I suppose it's probably possible to "learn on the job," so to speak.