Virtual Museum: Coin Collection

Coin Collection

Collections
Prefixes and Suffixes
Documentation
Bibliography
Missing coins

Collections

Five major collections are identified:

Sutton	164 (93 Greek, 71 Greek electrotypes).	Purchased in 1927-28 from John Hugh Sutton Memorial fund. The original purchase included 100 genuine coins and 100 electrotypes.
Webb	95 (74 Greek, 18 Roman, 3 other).	Most purchased in 1924 -29 by Jessie Webb with University Equipment funds. A further 15 Webb coins have not been found.
Bairstow	171 (78 Greek, 1 Greek electrotype, 92 Roman).	Donated in 1974 by Mr J.L. Bairstow.
Middle Eastern Studies	137 (including 65 Greek and 11 Roman).	Acquired by the former department of the same name (known also as the Department of Semitic Studies and the Department of Near Eastern Studies).
Electrotype pins	109 copies of coins with each face mounted separately on a pin.	26 faces missing. The provenance of these coins remains unknown.

The Sutton and Webb coins, purchased through C.T. Seltman of Cambridge University, constituted the original Classics collection. It was later supplemented by purchases and gifts to the Classics Department (later known as Classical & Near Eastern Studies, then Classics & Archaeology, finally merged in 1998 into the School of Fine Arts, Classical Studies & Archaeology). Arts Faculty Equipment funds enabled the purchase of 41 coins in 1974. Some sixty plaster casts of coins have not been examined.

Prefixes and Suffixes

Each of the 745 accessioned coins each have a unique identifying 'accession no.' But they also have an informative prefix and suffix in the 'other no.' field in the database, preserving a system devised in 1971.

Prefixes (the older "MES" prefix now truncated to "M"):

C	Otherwise unclassified	5	C=2, RC=2, MC=1
FP	Flinders Petrie collection	2	FP=2
G	Greek	497	G=251, GE=181, GM=65
R	Roman	182	R=169, RC=2, RM=11
M	Middle Eastern Studies	138	M=61, MC=1, GM=65, RM=11
E	electrotype copy	181	GE=181

Suffixes:The Webb, Sutton and Bairstow collections are indicated by a suffix in the 'other no.' field:

W	Webb Collection
S	Sutton Collection
B	Bairstow collection

The original Webb, Sutton and Bairstow numbers are recorded in the 'previous no.' field.

Five numerical series are used: Greek (251), Roman (171), Middle Eastern (137), electrotype (181), other (5). The numbers used with the two Flinders Petrie coins refer to the Flinders Petrie numerical series.

Documentation

Handwritten list of coins sent by C.T. Seltman to Jessie Webb; supplemented by John Carter.
Handwritten list of Sutton coins sent by C.T. Seltman to Jessie Webb and a slightly different list sent by him to the Registrar, who had his version typed.
The envelopes in which the coins have been kept (Bairstow wrote his own envelopes).
Nine cardboard rectangles measuring about 60 x 40 cm on which the electrotype pins were mounted, with hand-written annotations for each coin.
Various notes by Godfrey Tanner, John Carter, Peter Connor.
Invoices for 1974 purchases from Coins & Antiquities and Nomos AG.
Index cards in many hands.

Bibliography

Peter Connor, Melbourne University Catalogue of Works of Art (1971).
Peter Connor & Ron Ridley, The Classical Coin (1974).
Peter Connor & Chris Haymes, Coins of the Roman Republic (1991).
Peter Connor & Chris Haymes, Imagery on Roman Republican coins: further discussion. Iris 6 (1993) 26-41.
Peter Connor, Coins of Archaic Greece and Coins of Athens at the University of Melbourne (1996, unpublished).

Missing Coins

The database includes entries for missing electrotype pin faces but not for other missing coins.
From the electrotype pin boards are missing one or both faces from 20 coins (a total of 26 faces): E005a, E005b, E006a, E006b, E007b, E024a, E037b, E042b, E043a, E044a, E047b, E048a, E048b, E051a, E051b, E052a, E052b, E055b, E058a, E061a, E066b, E069a, E073b, E076a, E154a, E154b.
R70 was thought to be missing, but was formerly G158 and is still in that envelope.
From the Webb list are missing nos. 18, 26, 30, 40, 43, 47, 48, 51, 57, 60, 61, 70, 73, 76, 77, 83, 88, 95, 96, 101. John Carter (in 1966) left cards for all of these, labelled "missing", except for 83; the card is probably lost, because 83 is also missing from the list of weights for the Webb collection.
Coins R39, R40 and R41 were for unknown reasons accessioned as 1991.0171-3 but are described in the 1974 catalogue "The Classical Coin". A note on the envelopes says "previously uncatalogued", and they are not in the 1971 catalogue. But the envelopes are the particular type that housed the Webb coins.
From Sutton List 1 of genuine coins sent from London in 1929 (?), missing are 16 and 75 (both recorded is missing by John Carter in 1966), while 17 and 75 have been relegated to the electrotypes.
From Sutton List 2, 46a, 73e, 96a and 96d have been relegated to the electrotypes. Re 46a: G70S has "49b" on the envelope, though no such number appears in the lists. 49a is also missing (for John Carter too), but G78S is in an envelope labelled 49z - should it be 49a? 73g does not appear on the lists but is in the Greek box as G136S.