I find no official coin similar. In general case, how to know the reference for greek coins? I see many differences with letters positions etc... everywhere i see different coins but with same reference... im lost
There are many References for
greek coins and i understand that it can be quite confusing.
Usually, the references cited are coins of the same
type published in public or private
collections and discribed on popular handbooks and/or on specialized publications like corpus.
For
greek coins, a popular handbook has long been the
Sear "
Greek coins and there values". It is now more and more replaced by the Hoover "Handook of greek coinage"
For this specific coin, The
ref would be
Sear 713 and
HGC Sicily 363.
More "academic" general handbooks are also
still in used as reference : B.V.
Head (
Historia Numorum),
Babelon (Traité),
Kraay (Archaic and Classical
Greek coins)...
Published
collections, mainly on Syllogue Numorum Graecorum (
SNG), are very often directly used as reference. Here we could have
SNG Cop 255-258 or
SNG ANS 2-21 that are coins of the same
type in the Danish and the
ANS collections. When a coin with the exact same dies is found in a published
collection, the exact reference of that coin is often used.
For
Gela, a specialised study has been published by
Jenkins. All the known dies for all the
types have been described in a chronological sequence. For this
type (
Jenkins group I), 31 obv and 58 Rev dies for 103 different combinaisons have been published.
That explain why, for a single reference
HGC 2 363 , you could find so many different coins.
It also explains why the libraries of "serious" greek coin collectors are huge