Ancient-coin books for beginners. 
 

An excellent beginner's book about both Greek and Roman coins combines two volumes in one: Reading and Dating Roman Imperial Coins and An Outline of Ancient Greek Coins by Zander Klawans. It costs about $12 plus postage.  It might even be in your local public (or university) library. But it is not a price guide. Unfortunately, the most popular collector's price guide to Roman coins, Roman Coins and Their Values by David Sear, is in five volumes (from the Republic to 491 AD) that cost about $80 each. It is published by Seaby. For beginners, I strongly recommend the previous one-volume third or fourth edition for much less ($35 or so used on eBay, $80 new), and it would be very useful (I still use mine.) It is just not as complete a list of all the possible coin type as the five-volume series. There is a similar Seaby guide to Greek coins, Greek Coins and Their Values, also by David Sear, published in two well-illustrated volumes (but it is very frar from complete). It costs about $120. There are other price guides to other series of ancient coins, including Guide to Biblical Coins (fifth edition) by David Hendin, for about $75.
    All these books come up on eBay occasionally.

To learn about the coins and their place in the ancient world I strongly recommend the Seaby books, Coinage in the Roman World (168 pages, 187 photos) by Andrew Burnett (former keeper of coins in the British Museum) and Coinage in the Greek World (154 pages, 304 photos) by Ian Carradice and Martin Price, at about $35 or less (As I write this  in January 2018, there are new copies on vcoins.com at $15. That is a real bargain!) Both are up-to-date and well-written by fine scholars. There are many other excellent books covering these and other series of ancient coins.

If you are past the "beginner" stage, I have posted a page with book reviews of books on Roman and other ancient coins.

Return to the question about books on page 3.