ERIC SCHENA INTERVIEW, PART FIVE

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V27 2024 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 27, Number 32, August 11 2024, Article 10

Greg Bennick's latest interview for the Newman Numismatic Portal is with exonumia researcher and collector Eric Schena. Here's the fifth part, where Eric talks about his interest in ancient and medieval coins, how they are sometimes the only surviving documentation of certain rulers, and the state of primary source digitization. -Editor

ERIC SCHENA: Yeah ancient and medieval central Asian, which is very important.

GREG BENNICK: Well, because when we met and I remember asking you that day. You mentioned ancient coins at the time and I have an interest in them as well. And I asked you what specifically? Well you started listing dynasties that I had never heard of. I didn't do poorly in school. I didn't do great all the time. But the dynasties that you mentioned had a lot of syllables and I didn't recognize any of them. Have at it and explain to us your collecting areas of interest in ancients and whatnot and mention a couple dynasties and impress us.

ERIC SCHENA: Sure. My specialty in fact my degree is in Greek and Roman archaeology. That's actually how I met my wife. She has the exact same degree. I do like Greek and Roman and Byzantine coins. But what's really interesting about some of the ancients are the ones that come out of Central Asia, and I'm talking about the Greco-Bactrian, the Indo-Greek, the Indo Scythian coinage and similar dynasties. The Hephthalites for instance, the Kushans, those dynasties out there. In many cases the names of the kings are only known from the coins. That is certainly the case with the later Indo-Greek coins. In fact, there was a Kushan king. He was only known as Soter Megas, which is great savior in Greek.

Because most of the coins, the only title that was on them was Soter Megas. It was only through an inscription that was found in an archaeological site in the 1990s tied to a couple of bronze coins that the man's name was actually identified as Vima Takto. But the fact is, it was years and years and years, no idea who that man was. This king, we knew who he was, we can now put a name to him. And some of the other Indo-Greek kings, the order and the dating is entirely done by numismatics, because there's no archaeological evidence otherwise. So a lot of that is important and that translates to a different degree. Same discipline, but a different field with the tokens and store tokens.

With the ancients, finding those little pieces and knowing that you're holding a coin that is really the only written record of this particular king having ever ruled is fascinating. And this is especially important with the Islamic dynasties from that area as well. A lot of that stuff is not necessarily as well understood. In particular the Qarakhanids, the actual name that they called themselves is not known. Most people refer to them as the Ilaq Khans or Qarakhanid dynasty and they spanned a period of about two or three hundred years. This was around 1100, 1200, 1300 or so, probably a little on the earlier side of that. I know them mostly from the Hijri dating rather than the modern dating.

But hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of various little rulers, sub-rulers and other khans and sub-khanates and they're all over the place and how they all tie to each other and it's a science. It's an absolute science and a lot of that is not well understood anywhere. So, numismatics has an awful lot to contribute in places like that. It contributes here in the United States in preserving our history with tokens and also abroad with ancient coins and things like that.

ERIC SCHENA: Yeah, one of the things that I think Europe does, pretty interestingly enough is they treat numismatics as a scientific discipline and they actually have courses and you can get professorships in numismatics in several schools in Europe. I think that's very valuable. To them, it is exactly like a pottery specialist on an archaeological site. Because you have to have a specialist in that thing. Is this Samian redware or is it some other type of pottery? Because that might date the site and coins are very valuable for that, as well as pottery. And so, there is an importance with these little things that we use every day.

GREG BENNICK: Immensely so and you've expressed that so clearly and even just listening to you share these ideas, it becomes evident, that coins are not just tools that are made to pay for things. But there are tools for us archaeologically, historically in order to understand elements of the future or elements of the past which would not have lasted into the future had it not been for the coins themselves.

ERIC SCHENA: Exactly and there are an awful lot of institutions out there that don't have the manpower to do an awful lot of research that serious collectors of ancients and medieval coins or coins in general do on a regular basis. I mean a lot of the great collections of coins have been formed by private individuals. Who, through their generosity have made those collections publicly available for study and that has helped a lot of people and thankfully they get published in books like the Sylloge Nummorum Graecorum series, things like that. That's spreading that knowledge and that's very important and very crucial and something that I'm a very strong believer in.

I'm not particularly keen on withholding information, because I'm interested in something being worth more money than if I hold on to it and just hoard it. There's a lot of this stuff that has valuable information and that information deserves to be out there and shared. So I do like to share that information when I can find good things like that. And I have an open library policy with my friends who collect. They have anything that they want research in, let me know and they can go to my library at any time.

I have a fairly extensive library, mostly on tokens and other oddball stuff but I also have business directories. I don't know if you can see in the background, that is a microfiche reader. Yeah, I know! I have a microfiche reader. And right below it is a set of microfiche of business directories from 1800 to 1861 in the United States.

GREG BENNICK: It's awesome. And I love it. And I'm going to utilize your offer for information requests, because there's going to be some point where I'm going to find a counterstamp and I'm going to wonder who was around and a merchant in Indiana in 1847. And you're the person I'm going to call.

ERIC SCHENA: If there's a business directory between 1800 and 1861, there's probably a good bet that I can get to it. But the thing is again, those things, that's all on microfiche. And this kind of goes with a lot of the technology and making sure this stuff doesn't get forgotten. Microfiche is not something that you see every day anymore. I'm a Gen X'er and any time I went to the library, I had to use those machines, both in high school and in college, but they all got supplanted with the internet. Don't need them anymore. It's all computerized. Now that technology is an obsolete technology and the knowledge of learning how to use those things is just going to disappear, because an awful lot of microfiche got thrown out. And so that's knowledge that just gets tossed, mainly because nobody has a reader, because where are you going to get a microfiche reader?

GREG BENNICK: That's true. But we also rely on the fact that that information is placed on the internet, meaning there might be tablets with cuneiform that exist in the world that have information on them that's just not yet on the internet. And there might be business directories from 1827 in your collection that aren't on the internet anywhere.

ERIC SCHENA: Exactly. That's exactly right. The digitization of early documents, something that the Newman Numismatic Portal has done fantastically, I might add, is a very important addition to scholarship. I know I've donated a few of my works for digitization, and I'm a firm believer in that. But you're exactly right. Those aren't going to be necessarily complete because who knows? There's probably some weird guy in Virginia who's got a stack of microfiche of these directories from Philadelphia from 1811, but they're all in microfiche. So, yeah.

GREG BENNICK: It's pretty amazing. I know that I've had interactions with the Newman Portal myself about this, because my dad wrote a compendium. I've mentioned this, I think in another interview. I can't recall. But my dad wrote a compendium of railroad and railroad-related metals and tokens. I think that's the exact title. A Compendium of U.S. and Canadian Railroad and Railroad-related Medals and Tokens, Including Bridge Medals and Tokens. Brevity of title selection was not his forte, but he wrote this compendium. And he sold copies of it. He printed it himself, and sold copies for years. And when he decided to sell his token and medal collection, he sold the collection. He got rid of all the books, sold them, gave them away, whatnot, and then deleted the computer files.

And I only found this out recently. I was asking him. I said, What happened to you? I've got a copy of the fourth issue of your compendium here. Where are the rest of them? To make a long story short, another story for another time, he told me. He said he got rid of the files, not out of malice. He just thought, I don't need these anymore. And I was like, well, then that information is lost. So, I've put it upon myself to find editions of each of the editions of his book. I've found now each of the extant editions of his book. And I'm going to be digitizing them for the Newman Numismatic Portal. And then sending physical copies to libraries because I've met people who have used this book and rely on it for information.

And the fact of the matter is, without the digitization, without the saving of the history, whether on microfiche or on Dave Bennick's printouts…my dad's work, it would be gone. It'd be lost. So, who knows what's in that microfiche collection of yours that doesn't exist anywhere else? I'm kind of fascinated by that.

About the Interviewer
Greg Bennick (www.gregbennick.com) is a keynote speaker and long time coin collector with a focus on major mint error coins. Have ideas for other interviewees? Contact him anytime on the web or via instagram @minterrors.