New Ancient Coins Magazine

Alfredo De La Fe of Imperial Coins & Artifacts has recently begun publishing a surprisingly good (and 100% free) ancient coins related online magazine. Although many coin dealers publish the occasional article now and then, few actually go to the considerable trouble to round up several world-class experts in the field and then have write content that a beginning collector can comprehend. De La Fe's magazine, which is published quarterly, is generously illustrated and interesting to read.

Here are the articles which appear in this issue:

Grading Ancient Coins (A Comparison By Type) by Alfredo De La Fe - Learn how to grade ancient coins, using this simple explanation and nearly three dozen photographs.

Colin Kraay's Explanation of Overstruck Reverses by Curtis Clay - Some Roman coins have a curious striking error on them. The obverses ("heads" sides) are normal, but the reverses are struck twice from two different dies! Why would this be happening?

Coin Clipping in Late Roman / Post Reform Britain by Keith Nurse - Why would people clip tiny little bits of metal off the coins? And can it be proved that these little bits were used to create more coins?

Redefining Tradition - Cicero's Pro M. Fonteio by Mark Passehl - One of the most fascinating applications of studying ancient coins is that sometimes we can rewrite history as we "know" it based on the hard evidence the coins present. Is this one of those cases where historians have it wrong, and a coin collector is setting the record straight?

The Technical Obverse - Another Archaic Convention by Wayne G. Sayles - We all know that the obverse, or "heads" side of a coin is the side with the head on it, right? And when we depict a coin in a photograph, the obverse belongs on the left and the reverse belongs on the right, correct? Sayles tells us why not everyone agrees about these conventions...

The Cornucopia Served as a Jewish Symbol by David Hendin - This world-renowned Jewish and Biblical coin scholar tells us why the cornucopia appears on so many Biblical-era Jewish coins, and what the cornucopia meant to the Jews who used these coins.

A final feature called Ancients in the News provides a recap and links to several interesting news articles about ancient coins. All-in-all, De La Fe's magazine is well worth your time, and I strongly recommend joining his mailing list so you can be notified of future issues.