Freebie

I belong to a lot of email groups that discuss, barter, and sell ancient coins. I just read one of the newsletters, and Kevin who runs Noble Roman Coins, is giving away a free download of a 250 page powerpoint about cleaning ancient coins. I know that it is not everyones cup of tea, but here it is, click here. I have read the first 45 pages, and it is good, the advice is well organized and thorough.

If you do not know I wrote a pretty popular guide to ancient roman coins on ebay, click here. I wrote the guide during my last semester of grad school in Iowa, so that was in 2006, the information on pricing is out of date mostly due to the bad exchange rate with the Euro.

Bought an Ancient Coin

First ancient coin purchase in a while, but it was a great deal at 20 bucks. A soter megas coin, soter megas roughly translates as: king huge.

This is the website I bought it from: http://www.ancientcoinstore.com/ It is run by a retired art prof, who draws and cleans ancient coins. He is well known on all the yahoo groups for being a big advocate for electrolysis cleaning of ancient coins.

The top pic is the king brandishing a weapon, and the bottom is the king on horseback. It is an Indo-Greek coin, which means that it is from the Afghanistan/Pakistan region and was from a kingdom heavily influenced by the Greeks (Macedonians really) that came in the wake of Alexander the Great travelling through those lands.

I have a pretty substantial collection of Indo-Greek, Indo-Kushan, and Sassanian coins. Their initial locations span from Pakistan through Afghanistan and into modern Iran. I like seeing how ancient cultures used symbols to present themselves to the population. Coins are an interesting object from ancient time, because they did not have any mass communication like tv or radio, or even printing, so coins were used as propaganda and as tools for the state to project an image of power, hence a name like King Huge.

I knew a guy in Afghanistan whose name was Bacha Khan, which means King King, he was a pretty funny guy, and if you gave him a couple extra bucks he would buy neat souvenirs in the local markets for us to send home. I sent my dad two rhinestone hats that Bacha Khan got for me from the bazaar.

Sasanian Coins

Sasanian coins come are from ancient Persia, which is modern day Iran. They date from the 3rd and 4th century, and they were contemporaries of the late Roman empire before it split into the Holy Roman empire and the Byzantine empire. It was before Islam, and their religion was called Zoroastrianism, which has something to do with a fire altar, which is why there is a fire altar flanked by two people on the back of each coin. If you are interested in learning more, and seeing the names of the rulers and dates on specific coins, click here.

Ancient Coin Blog

This is a blog written by someone, Jerry, who is a retired art prof and is very involved in the uncleaned ancient coin hobby. He runs a yahoo group called Coin Zappers.

He advocates using electrolysis to clean ancient coins, which means hooking the coins to one end of a battery, hooking a paper clip to the other end, and then putting the coin and the paper clip into a solution bath (water and a few household chemicals). This removes the surface encrustation (lime, calcium) that has gathered on the coin from being in the ground for 1000+ years. It sounds dangerous for the coin, but it is the same technique most museums use.

To see the Ancient Coin blog click here.