Ancient Collectors! What do you collect? (Quick poll)

And all this makes me wonder what percentage of ancient coin collectors actually collect in a single area. My rough hunch is that such collectors account for no more than 50% of all collectors.

Either way of collecting is great. It is truly a matter of preference. There is no right or wrong way. It seems to me that the world of classical numismatics needs generalist Jacks-of-all-trades, as well as those who specify intently in one area. There are obviously collectors here on Cointalk from both camps.

And that doesn't even address the fact that there are those (myself included) who also have World and U.S. coins in our collections as well!

 

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I collect:

1. Roman Republic - Most of my ancient coins fall in this bucket. The percent cast and struck bronze is increasing. Stories, like Cipius the snorer, attracted me to this area.
2. Cast Bronze from Italy - This includes some that are RR, but many more were produced before Rome sucked in the Italian peninsula. Some of this collection predates the founding of Rome. It is super to hold large cast or struck bronze coins.
3. Roman Scale Weights - unfortunately none of my scale weights can be dated to the republic. I started here to see how the Romans weighed their cast bronze money.

 

It's nice to know there's someone else here whose collection doesn't number in the thousands, and has only a couple of hundred or fewer!

 

My collection consists of twenty coins.

 

But my understanding is that you once had many more than that, and that the twenty are what you decided to keep. I've never had more ancient coins than I do now. Although I did once have many more British coins and historical medals -- including gold coins and silver crowns going back to the early 17th century, and virtually complete collections of Mudie medals and City of London medals -- but had to sell them a number of years ago.

 

True - they are the residual of seventy years (give or take) of collecting and (very informal) researching. I do not recall what was the most coins I owned at any one time - maybe about 200.

 

I would agree.

Diocletian, (I am not a collector of his per se, just observations), has eminently interesting coins. It stretches from late antoninous radiates, to massive reform with huge coins, then a lowering of weights. Tons of busts, reverse, etc.

Like @Victor_Clark said, you might find it boring, but I could see the attraction to collecting his coins. The tetrarchy is actually a very popular area to collect.

 

Great thing opposites can be friends sir. Heck, I bought over 100 ancients this weekend alone. I probably average 500-800 ancients a year. Many group lots, but I probably buy 100 singles a year like my avatar.

Just like a tootsie roll pop, no "right" way to do it.

 

And for how many years have you been doing this? 500-800 coins per year add up pretty quickly!

 

I have collected mostly Julio-Claudian bronzes over the years - Sestertii whenever I could find them - and afford them, plus some odds and ends denarii of special interest. About forty years ago I started collecting Tetrarchic coins, but never to the same degree as the Julio-Claudians.

After writing all this it brought to mind how quickly the time has passed. Edit: deleted silly quote, sorry.

 

For ancients? About 20 years now. I have 3 of the largest SDB's full at this point. Maybe around 12,000-15,000 ancients give or take ignoring stuff like uncleaned LRBs, (still haven't gotten around to cleaning them), Chinese cash coin, (save for better pieces like multiple cash, rare empires, etc), and the like. This is not counting my US collection I still have and world coins, (like my Thai collection).

Good thing coins are small, or else I would be filmed for the Hoarders series, huh?

To be fair, my average value per coin is not like other ancient collectors I have met, where their average coin is $4000. Mine, if you take out maybe 300 pieces, might average $40-50. Not sure what those 300 pieces might average, I don't think I want to think about that, and my WIFE certainly wouldn't want to hear it......

 

WOW! Just . . . WOW! I'm impressed.

The next time my wife raises an eyebrow at my hundreds of coins, I'll say, "I have a mere handful. Medoraman has thousands!!!" ;-)

 

I collect mostly Greek. I like the iconography. It seems to me that they're less tethered by convention. There was much less convention: the world of coinage was young, the mould had not yet set. Also their coinage is more about religion and mythology and not about the idolization of a king or emperor. There's something archaic yet refined about the Greeks that I like.
But if I see a Roman coin I fancy...why not? Empire or Republic...
I can also totally see that someone would collect all the dies of this or that issue of emperor X and be perfectly happy with that. Plus, Roman history is, generally speaking, better recorded than Greek and tying a coin to a specific event is exciting as well...

If I could afford it I'd start collecting terracotta as well. But that would require the discipline to save money for two or three months before buying or bidding. Don't see that happening just yet .

 

My main collecting areas, illustrated by some 2020 purchases:

1. High to late medieval Central European coins, especially bracteates. I occasionally venture out into neighboring areas, though – recently, for example, I have developed considerable interest in the coinage of the military orders.


Abbey of Fulda, under Heinrich IV. von Erthal, AR bracteate, ca. 1249–1261 AD. Obv: Abbot seated facing holding palm branch and book; in Gothic polylobe and double pearl border; around outer Rim; H-V-H-V. 29mm, 0.52g. Ref: Berger 2293.


Teutonic Order, under Grand Master Winrich von Kniprode, AR schilling,1351–1382, Thorn or Danzig mint (?). Obv: + MAGST WVNRICS PRIMS; eagle shield of the Grand Master. Rev: + MONETA DNORVM PRUCI; shield of the Teutonic Order. 21mm, 1.64g. Ref: Neumann 4.


Livonian Order, anonymous issue (under Cisso von Ruttenberg or Jan Freitag von Loringhofen?), AR artig, 14th/15th century, Reval mint. Obv: +MAGISTRI* LIVONIE, shield of the Order. Rev: +MONETA* REVALIE; cross with three pellets in each quadrant. 19mm, 0.88g. Ref: Neumann 204a; Haljak 6; Hutten-Czapski 4054.

2. Roman Republic and Empire, currently focusing particularly on Republican denarii and on completing an Imperial, primarily Severan, "reverse pantheon" of the Twelve (or rather thirteen) Olympians:


Roman Republic, moneyer: M. Sergius Silus, AR denarius, 116–115 BC, Rome mint. Obv: EX·S·C ROMA; helmeted head of Roma, r., denominational mark X. Rev: Q M·SERGI SILVS; one-armed horseman (Marcus Sergius Silus) l., holding sword and severed head in l. hand. 17mm, 2.84g. RRC RRC 286/1.


Septimius Severus, Roman Empire, denarius, 210 AD, Rome mint. Obv: SEVERVS PIVS AVG; head of Septimius Severus, laureate, r. Rev: P M TR P XVIII COS III P P; Neptune, naked except for cloak over l. shoulder and r. arm, standing l., r. foot set on globe, holding trident in l. hand. 19 mm., 3,54 g Ref: RIC IV Septimius Severus 234.

3. Whatever I find particularly fascinating at the moment. While this previously mainly meant anient Greece, this category in 2020 so far has been dominated by medieval Islamic coins:

Seljuq Sultanate of Rum, Kaykhusraw II, citing caliph al-Mustansir, AR dirham, 1241–1242 AD (639 AH), Qunya (Konya) mint. Obv: Kufic legend citing caliph: "al-imam al-Mustansır billah amir al-mu'minin;" lion r. with sunface above. Rev: name and titles of Kaykhusraw II in Naskh: "as-sultan al-azam / ghiyath al-dunya wa ud-din / kay khusraw bin kay qubadh;" around, mint and date: "duriba bi-quniyat / sanat tis' / thel[athin] sittm'iat." 23mm, 2.97g. Ref: Album 1218.


Ilkhanate, under Arghun with Ghazan as viceroy, AR dirham, 1291–1292 AD (690–691 AH), Astarabad mint. Obv: Uyghur protocol in three lines, two above hawk and one below: "[qaghanu]/ nereber/ deletkeguluksen(?)" ('of the Khaqan / in the name of / struck'); Arabic name of the ruler Arghun in central l. field; citing his heir Ghazan in r. field; hawk r., sunface rising behind. Rev: Shiite kalima in three lines in square: "la ilah illa allah / muhammad rasul allah / ali waliun allah", partial mint and date formula for Astarabad in margins. Ref: Album 2149.2. 17.5mm, 2.93g.

 

what would you say is your favorite book on medieval Central European coins? I know there is no one book on medieval German coins, but I have been wanting to branch out into this area... (and if the book is not English, that is fine)

 

I've been collecting basically only Roman Republic for about 5 years now, and collected a little bit of everything for a year before that. My collecting focus has evolved a lot over that time: first it was "what interests me", then I got interested in deeply researching the coins I collected which for me naturally lead to a specialty because as I learned more, I went from only wanting a few RR bronzes to suddenly wanting a bunch of different styles, mints, etc. That lead to collecting imitations as well as I found them a fascinating divergence from the official issues, particularly because of the challenges in studying and collecting coins with seemingly far less organization than the official issues.

As I've continued collecting, it has swung back the other way: I lost interest in the imitations and many of the provincials because I felt I was collecting too much again and wasn't focused enough on collecting good, worthwhile examples of my common coins. My plan always was to sell those collections to ultimately fund my mainline RR collection anyways, so I decided to simply accelerate that and am in the process of that now. At this point, what I collect is basically the earliest coinage of the Roman Republic right up to Augustus.

The only other thing I really collect on an opportunistic basis are emblematic Greek silver coins. Right now, I just have an owl, but I plan to add a handful of additional coins in the future. My motivations are different with these coins, and the goal is less about collecting comprehensively and finding rare varieties but instead to simply have a handful of nice examples of common coins from another period of history I find interesting. I haven't even really bothered with buying the books for these coins since I don't really plan to collect them in such a way as to require the latest references(nor do I have room for those), I just want a few pretty coins.

 

My thanks to everyone who answered the poll, and also to everyone who left comments! I really enjoyed seeing the diversity of collecting areas, and I also particularly enjoyed it when people explained why they collect what they collect.

Regarding the poll being narrow, I sympathize: I hate it when I answer a poll or a survey, and the choices don't really reflect what I think because of artificial constraints like "choose a maximum of three," and so on.

That said, I made the restriction of one choice in terms of what one primarily collects on purpose. As a baby in the world of ancient coin collecting (just one--my avatar!), I have been noticing things far longer than I've been collecting ancients, and the general impression I have gotten is that the coins that are most frequently collected in this field are Roman--and more specifically, Imperial. I guess that would be "common sense" to many people, but the little (admittedly unscientific) poll here at least bears this out.

Anyway, my thanks again, and by all means, please continue to vote (if you haven't yet), and comment (as many times as you like!).

 

LOL, understood, @Nathan B. ... but I always solve that dilemma by Option Z: I do not RESPOND to polls!

 

My "collection" of ancients consists of only one(!).

I've actually collected, within the means I can afford, Canadian decimal coins since I was a boy. Over the years, I've sometimes sold my coins to buy other things, like wooden chess sets, or even other coins. Now, I'm starting to sell wooden chess sets to buy reference and pedagogical tools on ancient coins ("buy the book before the coin"), so the pendulum has swung the other way for me.

 

Probably the most approachable more or less recent book on this topic I read is Bernd Kluge: Deutsche Münzgeschichte von der späten Karolingerzeit bis zum Ende der Salier, Sigmaringen 1991. Kluge gives a concise and extremely knowledgeable account of coinage in the medieval German-speaking regions from its beginnings around 900 up to c. 1125. As the title suggests, the book is in German.

Unfortunately, a similarly useful book on German coins from the later 12th century up to c. 1500 is still missing, largely due to the extreme complexity of this field and the huge number of mints and issueing authorities. The plethora of highly specialized relevant books and catalogues thus can be rather confusing.

For eastern Central Europe, the situation is a little better. There are, for example, the great Corpus Nummorum Austriacorum (CNA), vol. 1 for Austria; Huszar: Münzkatalog Ungarn (1979) for Hungary; Gumowski: Handbuch der polnischen Numismatik (1960) for Poland; Neumann: Die Münzen des Deutschen Ordens... (extended ed., 2003) for the Teutonic Order and the Baltic Countries; and Haljak: Livonian Coins (2 vol., 2010/2011) for Livonia.

Still, the situation is far from ideal, and to navigate this field of literature, it is necessary to have good library access and to read at least English and German. I guess we are all hoping for the upcoming MEC volumes... (Germany will be vol. 2–4; Hungary and the Balkans vol. 11, Central and Eastern Europe vol. 15.)