I am all eyes      
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I need to make some scans. BTW, I saw that bust of Cleopatra some years back at the Chicago Field Museum when they had the Cleopatra exhibit there. My father and I took my eldest daughter there 8 yrs ago on her 7th birthday just as he had taken me there in the 1970s (don't recall the exact year) to see the King Tut exhibit when I was a kid. It was a great exhibit, we bought a few replica coins and a book about Cleopatra for her on the way out which she read over and over until she broke the binding.

Earlier this year, my Pastor friend and I saw the Dead Sea Scrolls in Milwaukee and they had quite a few coins as part of the exhibit. I started to give my pastor friend a detailed explanation of the coins and a small crowd gathered and finally a woman asked if I was a tour guide. I said no and my minister friend slapped me on the back and said "I bet you get that a lot in these places!" and laughed and we moved on after I answered a few questions.


Look for the scans later today.

Generally speaking, modern world coins begin in the year 1600 (an arbitrary Krause Publication thing I think but I don't know for sure).

Coins made between 1492 to 1599 are generally considered Renaissance / Reformation era which was really the beginning of the modern era.

So I'd say anything made prior to 1492 is ancient broadly speaking.

Byzantine & Medieval coins are generally treated as a later era subset of ancient coins.

The oldest ancient coins are ones generally struck out of oblong lumps of naturally occurring electrum from parts of Greece that date back to the 7th century B.C.

The most widely collected are probably Late Roman Bronzes in uncleaned condition. You buy them in large lots on eBay and clean them yourself. It's a very cheap way to start collecting ancients. You can buy them for less than $1 each but you get what you pay for.

Collecting Roman silver & billon (debased silver) denarii and antoninianii of common emperors like Hadrian, Septimius Severus, Gordianus III & Philip the Arab is an inexpensive place to start for collecting ancient silver.

A common misconception is that any coin pre-dating 1900 is ancient. I often get unsolicited emails from people with coins they inherited from a grandparent like Morgan silver dollars from the 1800s who want to know what their "ancient coin is worth" and I tell them I don't deal much in 'modern' U.S. coins and you can just see their head spinning in disbelief.

Hope that answers your question. 

In honor of the cheesy Egyptian reference, here are some Egyptian coins:

Ptolemy II Silver Tetradrachm:


Ptolemy II Small Bronze:


2005 Cleopatra VII 50 Piastres:


2007 Tutankhamun 1 Pound:


OK, Ok, the last 2 really aren't ancient - they are modern coins with ancient themes (a category all by itself) but I think they are pretty cool 

If these cause sufficient drooling, I'll post my 2 real Cleopatra VII silver tetradrachms and my 'whopper' AE40 bronze.

"So it is written, so shall it be!"
- Yul Brynner playing Ramses II in The Ten Commandments (1956)

Good - now there is an Ancient & Medieval place here!