Generally, speaking these two archives of auctions serve different, but overlapping needs. Both are for collectors of Ancients. (Both have new features beyond ancients.) Wildwinds is older, has more contributors, and tends to draw from eBay. Coin Archives is newer, smaller, and draws from a pre-selected group of highly placed dealers. Compare and contrast: www.wildwinds.com www.coinarchives.com I use both for my research when writing. (I do not actively buy coins.) I tend to look in Wildwinds for common material -- denarii and ants of the Severans, for instance -- and in Coin Archives for the "better" stuff, coins of the Ephesus Hoard, etc. However, because of its age Wildwinds does feature many outstanding rarities. Also, business being business, Coin Archives does have a nice database of common material. Both tend to be about equal in terms of the attributions and identifications offered for the objects. Are there any other comments, perceptions, insights or questions?
Gotta admit - I'm impressed with Coin Archives. I own some of the coins they have listed - not just ones like them, those very coins. It's not often Mike that somebody post about a web site that I don't already use or know about - but you just did. And it's one I'll use often Many thanks !
coinarchives.. I oftenly use coinarchvies. There's also a huge lot database about modern world coins. Does anybody know comparable services? jeggy
Both services have been around for years, and both are truly excellent, among if not the single best online resources about ancient coins, particularly for gauging market prices. But the attributions found in both are only as good as the expertise of the dealers selling the coin in question as well as the care they put into doing the attribution. My experience, and that of others, is that relying on dealer attributions is hit or miss, even attributions from the toniest high-end auction catalogs. If you check the attributions by going to the original SNG, etc., often the variety referenced is completely different from the variety of the coin being sold. I've heard that dealers/auctioneers often just reuse attributions of similar coins sold in previous auctions. What's more, dealers almost always refer to old standards such as SNG Cop., which may be 50 years old, and that they don't mention newer research that may contradict and credibly replace the attributions in these standards. Also, dealers almost never mention when there's disagreement among experts about the proper attribution of a coin, and I include here not only the date but also the minting authority (ruler, city, or mint) and the identification and meaning of the coin's devices. All this is understandable. Dealers can't be specialists in every coin type, attributing any given coin can take time, and dealers have lots of coins to sell. But if you want to nail the attribution of any given coin in your collection, there's no substitute for doing the research yourself. It can also be a lot of fun, adding to the richness of the hobby and to the enjoyment you get from looking at your coins.
More so here than there, that is, misinformation is more prevalent online than off. There's always been misinformation in print -- books, magazines, newspapers. But the online world's virtual absence of entry barriers means that not only has information dissemination been democratized, it also means in general terms that there's less professionalism in research and less thoroughness in fact checking. Just look at some of the crap that I've put out.
Oh I understand your point Reid, and I agree. But there's a lot of plain old mistakes in the books as well. And a lot of the info you find online comes directly from the books. The problem as I see it that unless you do enough research on a given subject to know the facts for yourself - you can't tell when information contained in a book, website, article whatever is wrong. And sometimes these books are the recognized authority - so people go right on perpetuating the mistake. Somebody should write a book just about the mistakes made in other books.
Warrent Esty wrote a short article for SAN about this 21 years ago, an article titled "Attribution Errors Found in Books" for its Spring 1984 issue. He focused on coin attribution errors found in books about ancient history and mythology. Things like an Egyptian imitative Owl with the Aramaic legend of Sabaces being identified as an Athenian Owl.
