some questions for all you ancient coin collectors...

JTMC

i just started collecting ancient coins. actually my kids got me interested in them at the last coin show we went to. they got 2 greek silver oblo 300 b.c. now i am starting to get hooked on collecting them . i was thinking of collecting ancient coins from specific periods in history which leads me to my first question.
are there certain coins i could collect from say when jesus was alive , from when there were gladiators , when cleopatra lived , and from when king arthurs knights existed?

second question is has anyone ever dealt with FORUM ANCIENT COINS.?

any help would be greatly appreciated.

BigAlan

are there certain coins i could collect from say when jesus was alive , from when there were gladiators , when cleopatra lived , and from when king arthurs knights existed?

Yes to all except the "King Arthur" part. If Arthur existed he probably dates to the 4-5th century AD. The whole knights, roundtable, castle thing is fantasy.

earlwbollinger

Actually you can collect whatever you like.
Many people do just that and collect along a theme of some sort.
One popular method was collecting a coin from every Roman Ceasar for example.
Unfortunately King Arthur was a lot of myth, but like stated above he was likely from around 400-500 AD from current conjecture.

ForVM Ancient Coins is pretty good, no problems when I bought from them a while back.

WillieBoyd2

Some Caesars can be really difficult to collect as they only held the job for a few days or weeks.

Also some are "popular" because of books or movies, Gaius Germanicus, for instance, AKA Caligula.
Guys like Antininous Pius or Septimius Severus are "cheap", however.
But nobody is going to make a movie about them.

Sylvestius

Caligula was a god among men... no wait that was Elagabalus wasn't it?


Notorious Caesars always draw in a crowd; Caligula, Nero, Commodus, Tiberius, Caracalla, the list goes on.

Sapyx

Though you can't collect King Arthur coins, you can collect coins of knights: Crusader coins are one of the most popular medieval series.

JTMC

thanks everyone for all your suggestions.

i was allways into u.s. coins but now that i have been bitten by the ancient coin bug i have found the fun again in collecting. i cant believe that i actually thought the knights of the round table actually existed. i must have watched too many movies. i just saw that great movie KING ARTHUR on cable the other day. oh well !!!!!

ON WITH THE HUNT.!!!!!!!

P. S please dont tell me there was no such thing as the HOLY GRAIL.
i know thats real because i saw the monty python movie. hahahaha!

coachleonard

actually, i think you can kinda/sorta collect historial 'King Arthur' coins. Most historians place his life in the late 400's to mid 500's. There are tiny ae4 roman coins, say of the empeor Leo and Majorian, that date around that time (c. 450-74 a.d). Problem is, the Romans left Britain in 410 A.D so you didn't have an influx of roman coins after that. What you DID have is crude local imitations of roman bronze coins struck by the Britons (barbarous radiates or "minims"). Problem with THOSE are, it's hard (maybe impossible) to date these barbarous imitations to the 3rd century, 4th century, 5th century, etc. Though going by style, you can get fairly close. So to cover the historical King Arthur period, i would try and purchase both a late roman ae4 and a British barbarous bronze coin. You should be able to get circulated examples of both on ebay for $25 or under

STLNATS

There's also a number of heavily clipped Roman silver siliqua which are thought to have circulated in the "king Arthur" period which might fit in as well.