The collecting of ancient coins is an interesting hobby, to say the least. To be in touch with a fragment of an ancient civilization, to hold something in your hand that another person created thousands of years ago, to think of what it was actually like to live in ancient Rome... let's just say it's not quite the same thing as collecting baseball cards or Beanie Babies (but hey, everyone's got their own tastes).

There's a very apt phrase among coin collectors and dealers, which is: "Buy the book before you buy the coin." Well, with the Internet rapidly establishing itself as a major source of popular reading material, I think that phrase can be properly updated to the following: "Buy the book before you buy the coin, or at least visit a few websites on the subject." And I do encourage you to surf around. You will certainly find a wealth of information on ancients and the collecting of ancients through any search engine, and there are plenty of specialized aspects to this unique hobby to keep you informed for life.

Of course, a good thing to do first would be to bookmark this site. :-)

The collecting of ancients is such a wide-ranging field that anyone wishing to remain sane needs to establish some limits. You might want to concentrate your efforts on collecting Roman or Greek coinage. Or perhaps you would rather focus on collecting the coinage of the Byzantine empire, or ancient India, ancient Parthia, or Lydia. Do you prefer bronze, orichalcum, silver, electrum, gold, or do you want a collection that includes a variety of these metals? How much do you want to invest into your hobby? Perhaps ancients are just an interesting sidebar to your American and modern world coin collection, and you just want to have a few representative pieces from your favorite early empire - who knows?

Since Quadriga deals mainly in the coinage of ancient Rome, that's the area which will make up the bulk of information on these pages.

One thing that many collectors (as well as non-collectors) ask when introduced to ancient Roman coinage is, "What's it worth?" Well, rather than giving a simple answer which would not do justice to this complex question, I have chosen instead to pay silent tribute to Albert Einstein by dealing only with RELATIVE values of coins issued during the first few centuries of the Imperial period (from Augustus up to the time of Philip I -- 27 BC to 249 AD).

Gold aureus = 25 silver denarii
Silver denarius = 16 copper ases
Orichalcum (brass) sestertius = 4 ases
Orichalcum dupondius = 2 ases
Copper as = 4 copper quadrantes
Orichalcum semis = 2 quadrantes
Copper quadrans = smallest denomination

The copper as and orichalcum (yellow brass) dupondius were coins of similar size, weighing between 9 and 12 grams, and measuring from 20 to 28 mm in diameter, and are distinguished from each other by colour and the type of headgear worn by the emperor pictured on the obverse. Ases (or asses) generally show the emperor bare-headed or wearing a laurel wreath; dupondii generally show a radiate crown. The largest standard coin of this period, the brass or orichalcum sestertius, worth 4 ases, weighs between 22 and 28 grams, and usually measures from 25 to 33 mm in diameter. Sestertii generally show the emperor with a laureate wreath around the head.

It is strongly recommended that you find as many references as you can relating to the area in which you wish to concentrate. What follows is a partial listing of some excellent books on the subject of ancient Roman coinage, with brief reviews of each:

Klawans, Zander H. Handbook of Ancient Greek and Roman Coins. 1995, 288 pp. Whitman Publishing Company, Racine, Wisconsin. Retail (as of March 1998): $10.95. An excellent resource for beginning collectors, this book offers great value and provides a nice overview of collecting both ancient Roman and Greek coins. Note: this is not a price guide, but rather, a preliminary introduction to identifying coins by portraits and inscriptions.

Sear, David R. Roman Coins and their Values. Fourth revised edition,1988. 400 pp. Seaby Publications, Ltd., London. Retail (as of March 1998): about $75.00 US. Regarded by many as the Bible of ancient Roman coinage, this incredible book provides a wealth of information on identifying individual coins by inscriptions, reverse types, and provides prices (prices are in British pounds, but what the heck - you can convert, right?) for most major varieties of all denominations from the early days of the Republic (c.250 BC) up until the East-West empire split (476 AD).

Seaby, H. A. Roman Silver Coins. (volumes I - IV). Original publishing dates are as follows: Volume I (Republic to Augustus), 1952; Volume II (Tiberius to Commodus), 1954; Volume III (Pertinax to Balbinus and Pupenius), 1969; and Volume IV (Gordian III to Postumus), 1971. Volume V (Carausius to Romulus Augustus), published in 1987, was written by C. E. King. To the best of my knowledge, all but Vol. V have been revised at least once since their initial publishing. Values listed for coins are provided by David Sear. For the collector who is interested in attributing silver Roman coinage by type and (sometimes) date of mintage, this is an excellent set of references that is well worth the investment. A recent re-issue of this series has been a blessing for numismatists, who for many years had to hunt down a relatively small number of available copies, especially of Volumes I and III.