• vcoins
• wildwinds
• sixbid
• coinarchives.com

Where to buy ancient coins

To come up with a list of dealer recommendations, I dumped all my purchase information into Excel and sorted it by dealer. All of the dealers listed on this page have supplied at least 3 coins to my collection, so I'm putting my money where my mouth with repeat business for all of these names. Note that there are many, many fine dealers who I haven't patronized simply because they tend to not carry coins from the period I'm interested in—or simply luck of the draw—so omission from this list means nothing. (Recommending a dealer who I haven't done business with, no matter how well-regarded they are, seems kind of empty.)

Vcoins

For anyone interested in any kind of ancient coin, vcoins.com is your first stop. It's an online shopping mall which aggregates inventory from over 120 dealers, including many of the leading dealers in the world. Even if you've never heard of a particular dealer, you can buy with some assurance from vcoins. Most of the dealers listed below are members of vcoins, even if they maintain their own websites.

And the winner is…

The largest number of coins—by a good margin—comes from Classical Numismatic Group (CNG). If they're not the largest coin dealer in the world, they're in the top 3 or 5. For the longest time, the thought of buying coins from CNG was absurd—I always automatically associated them with the high-end, hoity-toity collectors and just assumed all their coins were too expensive for me, so it was really funny when I saw them at the top of this list. But there are a several solid concrete reasons why they've landed there:

• They consistently have the best selection of the most interesting coins in good to excellent condition. At some point, as a collector, you have to go where the coins are, and that's CNG.
• Impeccable assurance and integrity, plus impeccable, friendly service. I've visited their office on occasion to inspect some auction lots, and even though I'm just a small-time schmuck collector, I was treated just like I was shopping for the $5,000 Greek silver coins.
• Easy to buy from with great web site. Beautiful, detailed photos plus useful and complete descriptions; searchable archives with tens of thousands of sold coins. Lots of ways to buy, including straight purchase from coin shop; regular online auctions; wholesale lots; plus their well-known printed auction catalogs.
• And, most importantly, I've been more than satisfied with every single purchase. Even with coins that, in all honesty, I might have purchased more cheaply elsewhere. There's a difference between overpaying for a really great coin that you love, and overpaying for something ordinary. Three cheers for honest, conservative grading!

And in second place...

The clear second-most number of coins comes from Frank Robinson. Who in a lot of ways is the opposite of CNG—just one guy, with a no-frills website and a quarterly no-frills mail-bid listing. But who also works hard to provide great service, with impeccable integrity, and is also easy to deal with. His quarterly listings always have a wide range of interesting coins and are much more weighted towards mid-level and bargain collectors, who benefit from the lack of overhead.

Recommended

These dealers all operate retail outlets where you can buy coins at fixed prices. Many of them have both vcoins stores plus independent websites, even if the links below take you to their "home" site.

Auctions

The "good stuff" tends to be sold through auctions. Sixbid.com is a good central location for accessing upcoming auctions, especially European ones. Seems like it's getting tougher and tougher to win coins in Europe with the dollar steadily deteriorating, but I've had some luck with the ones listed here. Most of these dealers also have stores and/or fixed price lists.

What about ebay??

Suggestions and thoughts will be forthcoming...