Collections

A collection of ancient Greek and Roman coins formed by Columbia professor George N. Olcott (A.B. 1893; Ph.D. 1899). The coins are arranged in chronological order in two cabinets. A hand-written card catalog indexes and describes each coin. In 1958 the Library acquired a collection of squeezes of almost all the coins used in the ancient Greek city of Syracuse on the island of Sicily

This collection represents a partial set of the catalogs and records that Olcott used to organize and classify his collection of antiquities. He would assign each item acquired a catalog number and provide a description of the item and often a note of provenance or an indication of how much he paid for the item. Many of these records describe physical items held by the RBML as part of the Olcott coin, epigraphy, and Arrentine pottery collections.