I recently read on a blog a collector saying he saw a coin published on Wildwinds. It got me to thinking what does "publish" mean to collectors? To me, if a coin is in a reference book and has been assigned a number, then it has been published. If a coin was in a printed auction and given a number, that also could be considered published. I sometimes see rare coins described by citing same types from auction sales such as CNG sale...lot...or BCD sale...lot...
In my opinion if a coin is found only on Wildwinds or similar sites and has not been assigned a refernce number, then it is still not published. But I could be wrong. I have several unpublished coins posted on Wildwinds and asiaminorcoins. Don't know if I should still call them not published?
I have a few of my coins shown in books, but they were not given reference numbers. Several of my coins from Colossae, Phrygia are in Alan Cadwallader's book Fragments of Colossae. One of my Constantine I coins with chi-rho is shown in Noah Goldberg's book Am Anfang Will das Geheimnis but it is in German and I can't read it.