ABSTRACT
Numismatics, more than any other subfield of classical studies, intersects with a field whose interest in the ancient world is only tangential: that of coin collecting. Coin collectors may be hobbyists, investors or speculators, but they are scholars of the ancient world only insofar as it is the ancient world that produced the coin in which they are interested, and that gives it its distinctiveness. Much of the technical writing for collectors is interested in the market value of particular coins, a question that may have little if any connection with the scholarly interest of the coin. Numismatists are interested not only in the coin’s weight, composition, condition and origin, but also in questions that may have little effect on its value: where and in what context was it found? Why did the moneyer choose the particular design that appears on the coin? What other coins were found with it? According to what weight standard was it made, and how accurately was the weight controlled? What, if anything, can it tell us about the people who authorized it, the people who produced it and the people who used it?
