The Dr. Robert Gonnella Collection of Parthian Coins

Dr. Robert Gonnella of Germany has assembled a wonderful collection of 904 Parthian coins, without a doubt one of the largest and most important private collections of its kind. Larger than the Shore collection, it is especially notable because the entire collection has been photographed, including the bronze coins, many of them rare and previously unpublished. The collection was sold in the Peus Auction 388 in November 2006.

Dr. Gonnella retired in 2006 following a long and illustrious career as Düsseldorf lawyer and certified public accountant. After earning his Ph.D. in German law, he spent his early days as a tax partner of Arthur Young in New York and Düsseldorf. In his high school days he developed a great interest in Near East history, in particular the Greek-Iranian relationship and has collected Parthian coins for nearly 35 years. He purchased his first Parthian coin, a drachm of Vologases III, in mid-Manhattan at the attractive price of only $15! As Parthian coins were relatively inexpensive at that time, his collection gained more Parthian than other Iranian coins. Dr. Gonnella also assembled the numismatic literature related to his field and still maintains a large numismatic library. In November 2006, following his retirement, he decided to sell his collection because his children had no interest in coins. In order to make his collection widely available to the public, he agreed with Dr. Müseler of Peus on the advice of David Sellwood to document his collection on a CD/DVD for transfer to the Internet where the complete collection is now available to everyone. Dr. Gonnella has published several articles on Parthian topics which are cited in the Annotated Parthia Bibliography. He is a member of the Royal Numismatic Society, London, as well as the Swiss and Bavarian Numismatic Societies. He may be contacted by email at r.gonnella@drgo007.de.

The images on these pages are used with the kind permission of Dr. Gonnella and Dr. Busso Peus Nachf. Photos of 376 individual coins appeared in the Peus Auction 388 catalog; the remaining 528 images are courtesy of Dr. Gonnella.

The attributions and cataloging of Parthian coins used throughout this web site follow David Sellwood's An Introduction to the Coinage of Parthia (1980, 2nd edition) for consistency. The few exceptions to this policy are explained here.

This page last updated 11 Nov 2008