Kaleun96

I believe Roma has entirely switched to DHL from FedEx now but they also offer Royal Mail as an option, which this one was shipped with. So here USPS has completed the rest of the journey once the package arrived stateside and I guess they have the authority to inspect packages arriving from overseas (or maybe an existing hole was just repaired as suggested). Sorry to hear this happened to you @robinjojo. I imagine it's something we all fear happening to ourselves one day and you can only hope that it's not a particularly rare or desired coin that gets lost/stolen. Seems you were doubly unlucky in that regard with the dirham ☹️

Yeah his work is probably among the best I've yet come across and his prices are pretty affordable too if I'm reading right. There's no way I could afford to shoot other people's coins for $14.90 each, he must have his post-processing flow locked down very well.

Thanks, good to hear that from someone with a bit of experience! I felt like I could recognise the main signs of quality in the fit and finish (e.g. there's a big difference in this regard compared to some handmade oak bedside tables I recently bought on etsy) but I don't really know enough about woodworking/cabinetmaking to spot the more subtle details that someone like yourself would surely pick up on.

Nice summary of info! "Tray wear" was an aspect I considered when switching from stacked trays to cabinets but my impression was that both velvet and felt will polish a coin over time, though perhaps velvet slower than felt. I take my coins out pretty rarely as is so for now I'm not too worried but just for aesthetics I'd like to upgrade to velvet at some point. I wonder if there are any studies on this, not necessarily with coins but just using either material as an abrasive/polishing cloth and measuring the effect of each. It's not that I don't believe the people you quoted, only that it's common in hobbies to find that anecdotes of this nature are either contradictory or simply perpetuated over time until they become "fact" without any real testing of the matter. Looks like there are a few, but limited, studies on the matter (ex1, ex2) but they concern other fabrics, though the author of the first paper has supposedly followed up that paper with testing on more fabrics. Would be interesting to dig into it more when I have some time. The key is of course not only whether velvet is less abrasive than felt (seems likely) but by how much and what that means in the context of coins. Out of curiosity, I just played around with pulling out / pushing in a few trays in my new cabinet and I honestly can't see the coins move much, if at all - particularly the heavier ones. I don't doubt that there is some tiny movement of the coin perhaps shifting weight slightly or even rotating on a high point etc, but I suspect you get the same movement from picking up stacked trays. I would even say for the stacked trays in a case, you'd be hard-pressed to take a tray out without the coins moving at least as much.

Thanks! I believe the fabric inserts are felt, I might look to replace them with velvet at some stage though. Wow that's a nice piece of furniture! I've heard about those requirements for completing an apprenticeship in Germany. I love that it is still practiced, it reminds me of Goldmund completing his "masterpiece" in Narcissus and Goldmund 😅

Thanks! It was £80 to Sweden so not terrible but that may push it over the line for some. Personally I think it's still worth it though.

Thanks! No I kind of gave up on using tags and just store them in a box instead. If I had nice handwriting I'd probably make my own but instead I manage all the info about my coins through digital means (my website + Google Sheets). One thing to note for those who do like having tags with their coins, the circular bits of velvet are removable from the trays (presumably to make cleaning them easier), so you could perhaps tuck your tags under the velvet for a cleaner look while also keeping them organised. You can find a lot of Peter Nichols cabinets being sold second-hand at auction for a good discount, though of course you're stuck with the trays they come with. I can't remember exactly why I chose Rob over Peter's, I think I partly liked the design more, maybe the price too, and it was a bit easier to understand what you get from Rob's website versus Peter's. I may be wrong but I have some vague memory Peter isn't making the cabinets himself anymore but apologies if that's not correct, it just rings a bell. The standard recess on Rob's trays are 6mm I think but he recessed mine to 7mm because I have a few chunky coins. There's also some clearance between the next tray above as well so 7mm should be plenty for a collection of most ancients.

I've reached out to three academics on Academiu.edu and not heard back, even though it seems they're somewhat active on there. Though I don't hold that against them, I have no idea how busy they might be or whether they have a bunch of spam in their mailbox so don't bother using it. I also wouldn't be surprised if they're not even aware I've emailed them as Academia.edu tends to spam you with notifications for irrelevant things. It's been a few months but I might try them at their email addresses directly if I can find them. I have had some luck though. I've chatted with one numismatist briefly on Academia.edu but they're also present on FORVM (and maybe CT/here, haven't checked) and I've also chatted with a French archaeologist who had published some articles on specific types of bronze age spears that I wanted to read but couldn't find online (free or paid) versions available.

My new mahogany coin cabinet just arrived this week and I could not be more pleased with it. I ordered it from Rob Davis Cabinets in the UK just before the New Year and while it was only meant to take about 6-10 weeks, rather than nearly 6 months, in the end it was definitely worth it and Rob's craftsmanship is top tier as far as I can tell. The drop door, for example, fits just perfectly into the gap with a satisfying sound and the gaps around the door are evenly spaced and minimal. There's also nice attention to detail with the wood grain arrangement and the finishing on all the edges. This model has 6 trays and you can choose the recess depth and from three different "sizes". I went for 7mm deep recesses and the following trays: 1x 45mm holes, 12 holes per tray 3x 35mm holes, 20 holes per tray 2x 28mm holes, 30 holes per tray Now for the photo spam...

Dealers that keep "bumping" their coins on Vcoins or MA-Shops so they frequently appear in the "new" listings. Wallin Mynt, I'm looking at you 👀

Thanks for all the testing 🙏I've noticed some of the problems are cache related so I suspect that is what is causing the discrepancies here. But like you, all the usual cache clearing methods don't always seem to work. I even have more options available on my end, such as forcing all users to clear their cache of my site and redownloading the content fresh but that hasn't always worked either. It's been very odd indeed but hopefully tomorrow things will be working better!

Definitely! I'm always looking for inspiration from others, to begin with it was very much TIF's and AncientJoe's websites. StackShot, Zerene, and the MP-E 65 - it's like I'm on photomacrography.net! I'm under the same username there btw but fairly inactive poster at the moment. I use Zerene myself but essentially built my own StackShot as it was a good excuse to learn some new skills and improve others. Thorlabs is definitely expensive in general and particularly so for any of their gear that moves! I just use their fixtures, mounts, brackets, plates etc but for the linear rail I bought a used THK KR26 (2mm pitch), which you've probably heard about. Can definitely recommend it, though it's not exactly "cheap" either. The mounting brackets and adapters from MJKZZ.de probably cost about as much as the rail itself. I've been through the hassle of finding ways to adapt linear rails to something "useful", whether it's a Thorlabs optical board or some photography cheese plate and IMO it's not worth the hassle trying to get the perfect combination of 5 different adapters to adapt the linear rail hole pattern to what you need. Best to bite the bullet and pay a bit extra for something purpose-built, which MJKZZ provides. Yeah the 360 is a bit of a pain in the ass to do and you can only minimise the putty, not remove it completely, e.g. I went from a white putty to a black putty, and then 3D printed the top plate to recess the "hole" in which the putty sits so it doesn't take up so much of the coin edge etc. My next big project is actually around this area, it'll be adapting my version of the "StackShot" controller to control a 2nd stepper motor so I can rotate the coin as I do focus stacking. That's fairly straight-forward, as is adapting my existing code, the tricky part is the photos because I want to create 3D models of the coins. I've had some success from test runs but the difficult part, again, is supporting the coin while it rotates. As you say you can do the thing where you lay the coin down, take photos as it rotates, then flip it over, but I personally had less success in getting a good 3D model out of it, particularly around the edges, but I need to revisit it when I've built the proper setup. What I'm currently doing is essentially "clamping" the coin on two flat surfaces at opposing ends which are covered in a hard rubber and then rotating the bottom platform via stepper motor. The top part of the "clamp" is attached to a bearing so it can rotate freely with the coin. It turns out you don't need much clamping force at all to hold the coins in this position but you definitely want to be careful and have something to catch the coin if it falls. And once you have that working, the other massive problem is obtaining an even light from all sides while minimizing specular highlights. I bought some polarised filter sheet for this, not cheap either, and it works but you do lose a lot of light when you polarise both your light source and the camera lens. Map - huh that's weird, my site's really not working well for you today! Is it not loading at all? In terms of interactions with the photos, that should definitely be possible with the library I'm using under the hood (MapBox), it has a fairly good API and should let you have something be triggered when you click on the images. I had thought about some of what you're suggesting too, like mapping the general regions each mint belonged to and then showing how that region changed over time (in geography but also in rulers). For now though that's a bit too much work and my collection is to general to have it more focussed. Definitely all possible within the MapBox framework though IMO. Eek the timeline not working either? 😶 It seems to be working for me in Chrome and Edge on Windows and Android but as we saw earlier today, doesn't mean it's working everywhere! It uses a plugin to link data from a Google Sheet to WordPress and from WordPress to various web charting libraries (e.g. ChartJS, Google's Chart API) but the plugin has been quite a headache for errors like this since day one and my capabilities have grown quite a bit so I don't actually need to use it and can make my own one instead. It also doesn't keep up to date with the charting libraries so I'm having to write a lot of custom code for the charts on my site anyway. I personally prefer my own timeline as I just wanted a quick visual representation of the periods my coins cover and my collection is too general to go into as much detail as yours. But I was thinking the other day of ways to improve it, first up will be linking the coins to their images so you can actually see what coin represents each bar on the chart. I may also add some filtering to it so you can select certain regions and timeframes etc. Presenting the collection - this is one I struggle with too. The "Coin Cabinet" is good for browsing but it's a pain if you want to look for specific coins. I also want to use my own website when I need to look up some info about one of my coins and the gallery isn't a great way to do that. I ended up making my version of the PELLA database to fill that need and I use it a lot now for referencing my collection. Fingers crossed that it works for you! 😅 I also added somewhat of an "easter egg" to it where you can click on the title of each coin to be taken to a "summary" page that has the info, the map of the mint, and the Ultra Zoom. I use that sometimes when linking someone to one of my coins as well. Wow that's already getting a bit long so i'll try to keep it short in terms of what I'm planning, some of which i've already discussed. 3D models as mentioned. Was planning to work on it this summer but will have to see. I always find it quite difficult to pick up a project again when it's been some time since I've worked on it. Lots of code and electronics to refamiliarize myself with. General improvements. My new gallery/lightbox feature borrows a bit from some of my other features (mainly the PELLA-like database one above) but each time I work on a new feature I improve something, e.g. better coding practices, null handling, performance, responsiveness of images and the page layout etc. So I have to go back through the Map, Database, and even Ultra Zoom feature to make some improvements there that I've included in the gallery feature. Speaking of Ultra Zoom, I plan to rewrite that one soon. Initially I used an existing plugin but then built a lot on top of it and the original plugin isn't being updated so uses old versions of OpenSeaDragon. So i'll probably get rid of his stuff and replace it with my own code that's compatible with the newer OSD versions. The 360 photo feature is also fairly simply implemented at the moment and needs to be refactored. When I first started with my site I depended a lot on plugins to help me do certain things, e.g. include some javascript to tweak something without having to dive into the plugin's code and make changes. Now I don't need to do that any more so want to remove as much of that as possible and clean things up. Backend tool to manage my coin database. At the moment I have an annoying flow of exporting from Google Sheets and importing data into PHPMyAdmin through the terrible interface. It's always a pain to do and means I often have data on my website slightly out-dated to what's in my Google Sheet. So the plan will be to make a backend interface where I can import and manage the data directly without having to SSH into PHPMyAdmin etc. I'm sure there's more but that's all I can remember off the top of my head!

Ah that's great! Someone emailed me the other week asking for having deep zoom links accessible from the coin page and that finally motivated me to overhaul the galleries and fix some other stuff too. Going back to your comment about the "new additions to the coin cabinet", I think I can replace that with one of these galleries too - with a little bit of fiddling. That "feature" comes from some third party plugin and is a bit of a pain to use anyway so it would be nice to do away with it.

Thanks again that was really helpful! It took awhile to get to the bottom of it, it was very strange because it would work in one window of my Chrome browser but not in another window of the same Chrome browser - regardless of how many times I cleared the cache, logged in/out of WordPress, etc etc. But I think it's working now and should be correctly displaying the right content on each page 🤞

Thanks for the kind words! And thanks for the info on the issue, I think I've identified what was causing it. Can you try load the pages again from your end? If that doesn't work, try a hard refresh. I've tried to wipe the entire cache of that page for everyone so hopefully just reloading will work but let me know if not 🙂

Interesting, you wouldn't happen to be blocking javascript from running would you? I use Chrome on Windows as well and have tested it with a fair few browsers and devices and haven't run into that issue, very strange. My site did go a few hours after posting this thread though as I forgot to reconfigure a CDN setting but it seems that occurred well after you would've seen the website. Can you let me know if either of these two pages work for you? https://artemis-collection.com/data-statistics/sibyl/ https://artemis-collection.com/coin-map/ edit: think I've identified the issue, let me know if it's working for you now 🙂 The other two things you mention on the home page aren't bugs though, that is expected behaviour, it's only the galleries under the "Coin Cabinet" section that I changed. Thanks! Yeah I figured the coin would sell quickly and over the years I've found that missing out a coin that sold while I was trying to negotiate with the seller sticks in the memory a lot longer than the extra 10-20% you might end up paying 😅

It just so happens the last couple of coins to arrive all featured birds on the reverse. It wasn't planned but I'm not complaining! I'm particularly pleased to have finally picked up a Starr V.B Athens tetradrachm as I had been searching for one for awhile and they don't come up as often in good condition as I first thought. It also doesn't help that auction houses still often get them wrong and label later 454-449 BC types as having been minted in the 460s BC, or even flat out calling them Starr V types! You can find more info about each coin on my website by clicking on the coin from the gallery. This is also a good time to mention that I've recently overhauled the galleries under the "Coin Cabinet" section so they auto-update when I upload new coins and also to make more space for the caption/description in the lightbox when you click on a coin. Let me know if you run into any issues or have any feedback!

It has its issues but still one of my favourite coins and longest surviving (i.e. without being sold/consigned):

I think it's more about recognising that this has traditionally been a hobby dominated by men and the environment that those circumstances creates means the hobby may not feel as inclusive to others. That's doesn't necessarily mean it is a bad thing per se - it is only natural that a group of people with a shared characteristic may develop a culture that is biased towards that characteristic in some way (e.g. in how we communicate with each other, the environment we create at coin shows and meetings, our broader behaviour around how we interact, etc). So it's not about treating women, or anyone else, differently. If we want more people to enjoy the hobby, which I think we can all agree that we do, then we may need to either reflect on whether we're doing our best to support that, or, if it's not something that we think we can or should do ourselves, supporting others in the hobby who want to (e.g. Women in Numismatics). I've heard stories from women who have been to coin shows and felt they were patronised by other collectors or dealers just because they were a women. Whether or not that is true (it's not for us to argue here), ideally we want to create an environment in which no one feels that way. It's not only limited to women either, I'm sure many younger experienced collectors may also find they're not taken seriously because an older person assumes they're just a novice. So would you say the same about an organisation focused on encouraging younger people to participate in numismatics? I don't think we need to do a scientific study to know the answer to this. You certainly could though and I'm sure all of us here would bet that there are more male collectors than female by any definition.

You can use ANA's CoinHoards website to see maps of where the coins in a specific hoard were minted relative to where the hoard was found, e.g. http://coinhoards.org/id/igch0134

I've also noticed in the recent months FedEx has been unable to stick to its estimated delivery date. I'm in Sweden myself and the packages are usually coming from the States via int'l express and FedEx doesn't have any advisory delays for that service, last I checked. The second to last time, it got held up for a few days in Paris before proceeding. I initially reached out to support and got someone from their American office who was useless and couldn't tell me anything. When I called support locally (in Sweden), the guy was super helpful and explained things are held-up in many places due to the acquisition and integration of TNT into FedEx. He assured me the parcel would be on its way soon and by the next day it was. He of course said COVID in general was responsible for many delays but I don't recall FedEx having this many issues even in mid-2020, though I could be misremembering too. The most recent time it was just held up in Paris for a day so that wasn't so bad but FedEx did used to always be on-time for me. They're still much better than UPS and DHL for me since they'll actually deliver-to-door in apartments and call you beforehand if needed.

Thanks, glad you brought this up actually as it's a good topic to discuss! Lighting has been a tricky one for me since it doesn't look the same on all screens (nor does the colour) so over the last few months I've tried to pay more attention to trying the photo on different devices but these two photos are a bit older (the bottom one much older). I've got the photo up on my large computer monitor and on my MacBook screen at the same time and it's really quite a big difference in how different they look. Some other thing you have to watch out for is the ambient light in the room changing, if you monitor has a "night" mode where it shifts the white balance to warmer tones, and also what's on the screen next to the coin (e.g. the coin's background, the "theme" of the software you're working in, etc). Quite often I'll edit a photo one day and come back to it the next and feel it's completely "off" because I had been editing it when there was bright sunlight, or the monitor had changed to warmer tones, or because I had been editing it on my large screen with nothing around the coin except the black background and then I look at it at a much smaller resolution when it's surrounded by different colours in the periphery. I notice it especially when I upload the photos to my website and see them in context of my other coin photos and then you realise you got the white balance a bit off or it's too bright/dark etc. I think the photos also have a slight shift in colour after I work with them outside of Adobe too, e.g. they're often a little bit different when uploaded to my website versus when working with them in Photoshop and I think it has something to do with the colour profile Adobe uses to display the images in their software. Would be curious if anyone else here has the same struggles and what you do to help combat these problems, outside of buying a $3000 colour-accurate monitor and controlling all ambient light 😅 But apart from all that I think I subconsciously tend towards slightly darker photos, rather than brighter, as I find bright coin photos a bit distracting and artificial. So if I were to edit the top one again, I might end up exposing it something half-way between my original photo, which is a bit under-exposed, and your edit, which is a bit over-exposed.

Had a go at photographing a medal for the first time yesterday. It was a bit trickier compared to ancients since the fields are so large and flat it can be hard to get a consistent look across them. I was going for the "reflective surface" look you get from axial lighting to brighten the fields and provide maximum contrast but Napoleon's portrait was relatively dark given the high relief. I ended up bouncing some extra light off my wall and then through a diffuser to help brighten his face without making it obvious I'm using a non-axial light source.

There's the problem, of course, that strikingly similar portraits of Herakles are found on coins that pre-date Alexander. I'm of the opinion that the vast majority of lifetime tetradrachms are not of Alexander and are, at best, Herakles with some Alexander-like features or just Herakles. While some may point to variation in style as evidence that some mints tried to capture Alexander's features more than others, I think the variation in style works against this theory just as much. And though I think you find slightly more people willing to accept posthumous tetradrachms adopted Alexander-like features, for me personally, that's less interesting and would require quite a comprehensive study to prove given that not all mints would have made this change immediately, at the same time, or even at all. Not to mention you'd expect some variation in style regardless and not all features may be adopted at each mint or by each engraver within a mint. Couple that with variations in known depictions of Alexander and the question of whether some of those depictions may have been influenced by contemporary depictions of Herakles and you're left with quite an uphill battle to prove the theory. Looking at just the variation in Alexander portraits between the tetradrachms issued under Ptolemy and Lysimachos makes me wonder how it would ever be possible to say with any certainty that it is Alexander as Herakles on his own coins without some other form of evidence. It would be interesting to see how machine learning might be applied to this problem. I don't think it could identify whether a portrait is Alexander or not per se, but it could help in clustering similar Herakles portraits together from his tetradrachms to make it easier to compare changes in features.

100% agree with you Doug. As you say, it's really worth testing your method with a few different types of coins to make sure you find what works best for you and to see if you'll run into any problems later with "difficult" coins. I probably spend about 2-3 hours a week shooting coins and I was eventually able to work through my collection over a couple of months that way. I hate the editing part the most so that's usually the limiting factor for me, I couldn't edit more than 4-5 coins in a sitting without getting sick of it. ---------------------------------- edit: Doug beat me to it, thanks! On the topic of guides, I'll drop a link to mine as well in case it's of any use. It's more focussed on getting a decent, reliable setup with a camera phone but there are some tips and suggestions that apply to any type of camera. It's just one method of many so if you try it and don't like the results, feel free to divert from the guide and try your own thing. At the very least, it'll get you thinking about lighting and how small changes in size or angle can have a big effect on the end result.