Selling antiquities is extremely challenging. I have spent many thousands of dollars on books and spent hundreds of hours learning for
EACH of a few
types including:
ancient glass,
lamps,
fibulae and arrowheads. And even with that, I do not consider myself an expert on any of them. More knowledgeable than most of humanity, yes; confident expert, not quite. I have spend almost as many hours on
scarabs,
shabtis, and clay tablets, but am hampered by having no possibility of actually reading hieroglyphics, or
cuneiform. But the most difficult aspect of
antiquities is that those
types, just scratch the surface. And think about how different those things are from
sculpture, bronzes,
terracotta figures,
pottery,
wood,
fabric...
Lately I have embarked on studying
Pottery.
Pottery is extremely complex because it was made locally EVERYWHERE and for millennium. So, the variety is extraordinary. And even the same
shop or maker, often tried to make a great variety of
types. I have blown my
budget and filled another bookcase in the last month (and I already
had a lot of books).
I have started expanding the ancient
Pottery page on
NumisWiki. It is
still a stub, more or less.
One nice aspect to
pottery is that the
Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum is mostly online and it is HUGE. I have some of the volumes, but they can be very expensive and the online versions are perfectly useable. I have added a
CVA Online page to
NumisWiki, and am adding the
types covered for the various volumes as I use them. It is helpful for me personally.
Please make updates or corrections to both pages (and the rest of
NumisWiki) if you see something you can improve.
I actually have more than a dozen ancient plates, pots, jars, jugs, vases, etc. I bought them from Alex
Malloy and a another collector's estate. They have no tags or labels, so I am starting from nothing. I have
had them so many years because, for all but the most common
types, I want references to a museum
collection, excavation report, corpus, or pier reviewed article. I want to know the authenticity, culture, location, date, purpose, etc. with great confidence.
Here are some of my recent attributions -
Ancient Pottery For SaleHere is one that sold recently for which I am quite pleased with my research -
Canaanite, Cypriot Imitative Lentoid Terracotta Pilgrim FlaskI would like to create a new board in this
antiquities section for ancient
pottery. Do we have any collectors that will volunteer to moderate?