——— What I Like About ———

Ancient Coins

Site last updated on 19 November 2018.

This site is hosted on a non-commercial basis by Forvm Ancient Coins.

First, links to the two main sections of this site.

Click Me	———————————— To See ————————————	Click Me
	The Sign Language of Roman Coins. Pages about the messages sent to the people by Roman coins. Coins as propaganda. Gods, goats, snakes, flowers and other symbols, and what they meant.
	Interesting Things about Ancient Coins. A set of pages that cover all levels of interest in ancient coins, some requiring no knowledge, some designed for experts. Medusa, Pegasus, patinas, holed coins, hut coins, hairstyles, and a dozen other subjects.

Then some informative links.

Click Me	———————————— To See ————————————	Click Me
	Index of coins shown on this site. A simple text index that lets researchers and anyone else who is interested find the coins quickly.
	An Illustrated Ancient Coin Glossary. The meanings of some specialised words.
	Links to some useful and informative sites. Some handy links - by no means a complete list.
	Photographing ancient coins. A set of pages giving some ideas and examples of how to photograph coins and how to use Photoshop to process the photos.
	Books about Ancient Coins and their Cultures. Books that I have and some comments on them.
	Numismatic Bulgarian. Some useful words for coin reference books in that language.
	Emperors listed against their RIC and RCV volumes To make poorly written ancient coin references easier to use.
	Hellenistic Names and their Meanings As given to the many Hellenistic rulers who followed Alexander.
	About This Site. Acknowledgements of help, and a few technical details about how the site is put together.
	A list of what's been added to this site, and when. I add several new pages every year, so if you've been here before it might be worth checking this out.

hese pages are .....

These ancient coin pages were inspired by the many excellent web sites about ancient coins. It would be foolish to try to match them. The best of them are way beyond my capability and resources, and why would I want to achieve a pale shadow of the best? I have listed a few sites which I think are particularly useful or interesting on my Useful Links page.

Instead, my own pages cover some subjects which interest me and were fun to put together. So, they might be interesting and fun for others, too.

hat I Like

What do I like about ancient coins? I like their feeling of bringing history to life. I like their language of imagery, so different from ours that it gives me the feeling of being in a different world - look at the two coins I put right at the top, representing aggression and agriculture, therefore war and peace. I like the way I have to learn great chunks of history to find out about their context, and it's living history, not just reams of dates like the history lessons I had at school. I like the way they tell stories and send messages. Some of this might be apparent from these pages!

Nearly all the photographs on this site were taken by me. The few which are not are clearly labelled and attributed. If you want to use my photos, please ask.

Very few of my coins are really rare, and most are quite common. You can have a fascinating collection without needing a fortune. Of course, a fortune makes it easier.

The award on the left was from the Forvm Classical Numismatics Discussion Board in November 2005. It goes to web sites that are "very informative to the coin collecting community and which promote the hobby in general." This award was a great encouragement to me in the early days of my site.

On the right are Forum's annual bronze award for 2009, silver award for 2010, and bronze again for 2011. I am very pleased with these, which always have very stiff competition. It shows that the site is really achieving its objectives, which are to be informative as well as interesting, to make connections and set out ideas, to stimulate interest, and generally do more than just make lists of coins. Additions and improvements will continue!

The list of sites which have received these awards can be seen on the Forvm discussion board here: [Winners of Forum's awards for numismatic excellence] and here: [Forum's annual website awards winners].

These pages are by Bill Welch.

If you have any questions or comments, or have spotted any mistakes, please:

None of my coins on this site are for sale!

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