Emperors and assassins, owls and turtles, gods and goddesses, brave heroes and villainous rogues--all of these and more await you among the 100 Greatest Ancient Coins. In this beautifully illustrated book, Harlan J. Berk, one of America's best-known ancient-coin dealers, takes you on a personal guided tour of the numismatic antiquities of Greece, Rome, the Byzantine Empire, and other parts of the ancient world. Coffee-table-size, 144 pages, full color, with enlarged photographs and stories for every coin.

Thanks are also due to the members of my advisory committee, who helped me to pick the candidate coins for the voting. They are Rob Freeman, Frank Kovacs, Victor England, Arturo Russo, Alan Walker, and Simon Bendall. If you can think of another 100 coins that could have been in this book, I am with you all the way, but we aren't rewriting the British Museum Catalog.

My last words are these: learn as much as you can about the area of ancient coins you plan to collect, and have a strong relationship with a very good dealer of your choosing whom you are constantly testing. As a dealer who has been in the business for more than 40 years, I can tell you that a really focused collector will know as much as, and sometimes more than, a very good dealer in the collector's chosen area of specialization.