Author: Gregory C. Jenks

The original Inventory of Greek Coin Hoards (IGCH), edited by Margaret Thompson of the ANS, Otto Mørkholm of the Danish cabinet in Copenhagen and Coin Kraay of the Heberden Coin Room in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, was published in 1973 by the ANS for the International Numismatic Commission. The work contains inventory listings of 2387 hoards, covering the whole of the ancient Greek numismatic world.

Online IGCH was devised by Sebastian Heath and Andrew Meadows as an attempt to create an open and accessible version of IGCH on the world Wide Web using the principles of Linked Open Data. The test version was housed within the Nomisma.org namespace before its migration to its own domain in February 2015.

Work on the original project was enabled by funding from the American Numismatic Society, Stanford University, and the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council. Data was contributed by the Nomisma project based at Paris IV Sorbonne. Subsequent work to create the new site has been supported by the International Numismatic Council, under whose auspices the project has now been incorporated. Technical realisation of the new IGCH site is by Ethan Gruber.

The current site is a prototype, and will undergo enhancement through the course of 2015. It is the long-term aim of the project to incorporate all published Greek coin hoards as part of the broader Online Greek Coinage initiative.

In 2004 the ANS established a centralized archive when it was preparing to move to its location in Lower Manhattan. The mission of the Archives is to serve as a centralized resource for historical information about the Society. The ANS Archives fulfills this mission by:

• collecting, preserving, and making accessible the historical records of the Society;
• using these records to promote to key audiences the Society’s heritage of success; and
• supporting the Society’s staff in their roles as scholars and administrators.

The records housed in the ANS Archives document the history and development of the Society, its collections, exhibitions, and programs, as well as the contributions of individuals and groups associated with the Society — they are unique and irreplaceable assets.

In short, the ANS Archives serves as the Society’s “institutional memory.”

We have recently published online three more articles by Dr Peter Lewis in the Australasian Coin & Banknote Magazine:

February 2019 – The Coins of Tarsus, Part 1
December 2018 / January 2019 – An Interesting Byzantine Coin from the 11th Century
November 2018 – Griffins

The ancient coin search service (acsearch) has recently announced a significant upgrade to the scope of its database.

acsearch.info is an auction database containing numismatic auctions from various renowned international auction houses. The database in part goes back more than 17 years and contains pictures, descriptions and realized prices in several currencies.

The official announcement reads as follows:

The long-awaited acsearch image search has successfully completed the beta phase and is now available to all users. With this great new feature you can quickly and easily find entries of the same coin or die-matching coins in our archive. Areas of application include pedigree research, die studies, coin attributions, etc. The search works in real time and results are displayed within a few seconds. For an optimal search performance, please read the usage instructions.

Due to the complex and expensive infrastructure, the acsearch image search is subject to a fee (starting from 0.70 € per search).

All premium users receive 20 free search credits as a thank you for their support.

The American Numismatic Society (ANS) has announced the release of a new web-based research tool: Ptolemaic Coins Online (PCO).

As part of the National Endowment for the Humanities-funded Hellenistic Royal Coinages project, PCO is a new research tool intended to provide wide access to the coins listed in the print volumes of Coins of the Ptolemaic Empire by Catharine C. Lorber.

While the Ptolemaic coins in the ANS collection (some 3,371 pieces) will ultimately serve as the core of the searchable catalogue, a continuing effort will be made to illustrate all types in the database. The current version of PCO includes 990 types, 429 (43%) of which are illustrated by at least one specimen from ANS, the British Museum, the Munzkabinett der Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, the State Coin Collection of Munich, Harvard Art Museums, and the Fralin Museum of Art (University of Virginia). Ultimately, additions specimens will be added with links to coins in the Bibliothèque nationale de France and other public and private collections.

Along with Seleucid Coins Online (numismatics.org/sco) and PELLA (numismatics.org/pella), which currently focuses on the coinage in the name of Alexander the Great, PCO further expands the coverage of typologies and material available through the Hellenistic Royal Coinages project.

The American Numismatic Society, organized in 1858 and incorporated in 1865 in New York State, operates as a research museum under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code and is recognized as a publicly supported organization under section 170(b)(1)(A)(vi) as confirmed on November 1, 1970.

Read the full the press release from ANS.