(Click here for the English translation of this book!)
Nikola Moushmov's (1896 -1942) Ancient Coins of the Balkan Peninsula and the Coins of the Bulgarian Monarchs, was published in 1912, and is in Bulgarian, with Latin translations of headings. It's very comprehensive and and even gives prices (in 1912 Bulgarian Leva), which provide a scale of relative rarity which is useful in the same general way that RIC rarities are.
The book is arranged by city and by ruler or rulers within that city, in an order familiar to those who have used SNG Copenhagen, for example. There are 500 pages of listings plus 68 plates, and a total of 7460 numbered types. For comparison, in Moushmov's listings for Geta from Nikopolis, there are 43 types; Copenhagen lists only one.
The way it is comprehensive in this one book is by being less than fully definitive on each listed type, and by employing a clever trick with the plates. He lists the various incriptions possible for that ruler (or rulers') obverses at that city at the beginning of the section (e.g. Macrinus and Diadumenian of Markianopolis), then lists the types (e.g "Concordia seated with patera and cornucopaie" is #557) for them, but without associating particular insciptions with that entry. Therefore, it is possible that there are different possible inscriptions for a given Moushmov number. For example there may be different legates who issused that Concordia type: there could possibly be an VP PONTIANOV as well as an VP AGRIPPA legate that is *also* Moushmov 557.
Fortunately for us non-Bulgarian speakers, he also provides nice plates of most reverse types, e.g. an illustration of what a generic "Concordia seated left with patera and cornucopiae" looks like. He uses, say, a coin from Markianopolis to illustrate the same type from Nikopolis, Tomis and Kallatis, which is an very clever way to save space in his plates.
Overall, I've found this book to have excellent coverage, and to be extremely useful even if you don't speak Bulgarian, though I'd recommend a Bulgarian-English dictionary as companion to it. I'm using the Hippocrene Practical Dictionary version by Ivan Tchomakov, which was about $10 on Amazon.com.
- Dave Surber, June, 2002