Trying to find the newest book of ancient roman coins and their values

I know others have mentioned the sear book volume V and another I cant memember off hand. I am going to books a million tomorrow to find the best one I can get. I am mainly looking for fair market values so i dont go over too far at auctions. That and having good pics of the obverse and the many reverses to see what out there to collect also will be great

 

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People have explained to you that no book is going to have up to date values, including Sear. (Which has prices in British pounds anyway!) That's what the Internet is for. People have specifically told you what sites to consult. Volume V of Sear does not = the 5th edition; it's the final volume of a 5-volume set, covering the last century or so of the Western Roman Empire. As for pictures, the pictures in Sear are tiny -- thumbnail size. And they're not of every type; the series has 22,000 different types and only a minority are illustrated. You can find pictures at Wildwinds and other sites. I use Sear mostly for its coin descriptions (including legends), to help identify coins and also to browse through to see what types exist for different emperors and (in Vol. I) for the Republic.

 

At first I thought you wanted to get a fair price for the book itself, but upon rereading it looks like you want the book to tell you the approximate value of the coins.

As DonnaML has pointed out, that's really not the best way to go about it. If you want prices and images for a particular type, Wildwinds, Sixbid and Numisbids are good places to start with.

 

If I want to approximate (key word) the price for a coin I'm interested in, I am just looking for it in different past auctions, as recent as possible. But you have to remember there is no such thing as fixed price. It depends on way too many factors, such as how many bidders were interested in a certain item at a certain time, the condition of the coin, if it was a well known website or not ....

I won some coins paying just the starting bid because nobody else was interested. I lost some because I was outbid over the price I found correct for the coin (that was my personal opinion). I lost coins because I wasn't paying attention and I just missed them.

It's irrelevant if you find a coin sold in 2015 for, let's say, 100$. Does it mean all the coins you will find, same type, cost 100$? If that was a VF and you find in 2020 the same coin but in Fine condition, what is the "correct" price? 30? 50? 100?
Same situations with modern coins, I have the KM catalogs and sometimes I check them, the prices there are informative and in many cases, the market is completely different.

 

Sometimes the 'values' books are OK for telling you relative values - that is if a type is expensive or cheap compared to other types but there are too many factors to translate easily into a price you should pay. Any coin you buy at auction costs you more than other bidders are willing to pay. Only you can decide how much is more than you are willing to spend. You can spend a lot seeking only the finest and most popular coins or you can seek cheap coins that other bidders ignore. Either way, you pay more than the coin was worth to the competition. That is the definition of auction. Over the years, my best 'bargain' coins were bought from small dealers who specialize in "grandpa's collection" and lots that they got wholesale from auctions that could not sell them. Many of these coins are junk. Your job is to decide which ones are not in your opinion. After all, your opinion is the one that counts. If your interest in the hobby is making a profit, I suggest leaving now and finding other investments. Certainly many of our coins will sell for a profit someday, not necessarily someday soon. Pay what you are willing to pay and enjoy your purchases. I buy rather few coins anymore because so many people have a lot of cash right now and had to cancel their cruises and vacations.

Soon, the regulars on this list will be posting their top ten favorite coins purchased in 2020. You might benefit from the ones that include a bit about why they liked that particular coin. If you take the trouble to search December and January postings for the last few years, you might find some of those postings (I wish we all used the same format titles to make them easier to search out). Some of these groups will strike you as great coins while others will leave you asking why someone would but that one. That is the fun of the hobby.

Edit: I forgot Curtissimo posted a list of the favorites going back several years. I hope he does this again this year. I think I'll start a new thread for this.

 

I see, so sear volume 5 is not a updated of all the volumes put together, i was thinking each volume was a update to the last. I got it now. i looked for it and the other book suggested at local book store but my luck only place is going out of business (books a million) and they had nothing with roman coins, i was trying to see if any thing new might of been out on the market to get a round about average price on stuff . I run into dealers at local markets and never get wifi signal to look online while there. I will prob do screen shots of stuff in online catalogs mentioned and put them in a folder on my phone of the main stuff I look for. My issue was pricing where I have paid say $26-$70 for coins and know they are prob worth for over $100, then seen them on auction for $200-$300+. So with differences of $250 sometimes its confusing on whats a fair/average price these days. the many different reverses brings many different prices. I mainly go with what I am willing to pay so so far.

 

Other members wrote here their ideas, and I agree completely.
Price for a coin is exactly the price you paid. Or the price that was paid by a person who outbid you.

It is not very relevant if you can find in the past the same coin (IN THE SAME CONDITION) sold for a higher or lower price. It is also not very relevant if you find a similar coin on sale in a different place, on a much higher price.

What is the correct price for this lot of 4 denarii (in fact 3 denarii + 1 Antoninianus, but youu got the pic)?
I won it with 70 EUR + taxes.
For me this was more than decent, hence I decided to bid (and won) - but for other collectors the price could seem very high or very low, depending on how picky they are or if these coins are in their area.

 

Books are out of date the day they are published. To find current retail prices, check vcoins or auction houses archives. You can also pay a subscription to sites such as acsearch.com.

 

Vcoins! Yes that was the online place I could not remember. I was just there q couple weeks ago. Thats a great place. Yeah I am def going to get a memory card just for roman coins and put all the first 200 years "main obverse" info on it, then I can happly enjoy buying reverse types and go broke being happy...lol

 

Thanks for the replys, I tried to find a couple threads last night where I bought these diva coins and posted them and I couldnt find them. (I am not sure if user content only goes back so far?) I know some of you mentioned stuff on that thread I was looking for. I was in a bad car reck years ago and almost killed by a drunk, after brain surgery my memory is 1/2 as good as it use to be, but I will try not to ask the same type questions. For me sometimes the same type sounding question is me trying to get more specific info to the question I might have asked before. If that makes sense.

 

I am recently disabled, so I feel for you.

 

Sorry to hear, living with pain daily is rough but having more time to hunt for coins helps...

 

It sounds like you're trying to collect/attribute/value ancient coins like US coins. Unfortunately, it's not as simple as buying a Redbook, or Cherry Pickers Guide, or VAM Morgan Dollars. Coins were struck by hand, from handmade dies and planchets.

I ran into this problem when I started collecting in the early 90s. I bought a copy of Sears' book and quickly became frustrated when I couldn't find a listed that matched my coin.

The information is all over the place, books, web sites, forums like this, etc. The experienced members here provided some good suggestions to point you down the right track. From my experience, anceints became less frustrating and more rewarding when I stopped trying to use the same methods that I did for modern US coins.

 

Listen to Oldhoopster. Ancients are not a good hobby for those who absolutely must have a concrete answer to everything. We know a small fraction of what might be known in a perfect world but many places, dates, denominations, reasons for issue, links to history, and, least of all, values are just not known as solidly as a modern collector might like. If you bring to the ancient hobby the attitude fostered by filling a blue Whitman coin folder while referencing each coin in a Redbook, you will never be comfortable with collecting ancient coins.

What did I learn from those blue folders? I learned that a collection is defective unless there is one coin in each slot and that having more than one coin for a slot creates a problem best avoided. I learned that there was printing under each slot that told me everything I needed to know to participate in the hobby. I learned that I could buy different folders that would dictate to me which coins I needed to collect to fill that folder and which to avoid because they were a year too old or too new to fit in that folder. I learned that 1909 coins did not all fit in one folder even though I had been told that the date was the most important part of the coin. I learned that a coin without complete dating information was defective in the worst possible way. I learned that the coins were displayed with one side hidden and unimportant unless there was a special case (like a VDB on the reverse) that would make me put that coin in the slot with the other side up. You will have no trouble ignoring everything I said and the advice of Oldhoopster and a couple dozen other people here who have been there/done that sometime in the last year or seventy (we have a couple people her who have been doing this since Christ was a Corporal - or is it corporeal?). Check your preconceived notions at the door, keep an open mind and enjoy the experience.

 

@Everett Guy I am a big fan of books on ancient coins. Some are better than others. Online sources are better for estimating price. I hope you enjoy the learning experience as much as I have.
I started collecting ancient coins about 15 years ago. I looked around a bit and decided to concentrate on Roman and bought the book suggested by the coin shop where I bought a few LRBs. The book was inexpensive and listed the Roman Emperors. After looking a bit, I picked Roman Republican coins, hence my name here. I jumped to a $100 book by Sear, vol. 1. Over time I picked up dozens of books. I do not go to them for price guidance. I do go to them for background, approximate dates and relative price. When I started I did not know of online sources and wanted to see what a coin should look like before I bought it. The following coin is not common. I found it in several books I own, see below. Having information on the coin convinced me to bid well above the price estimate because it was important to me. FYI, I found the coin in several books, see list.

Crawford 36/5, wt std – 270 grams
Aes Grave 23
Sydenham 82
Vecchi 92
Thurlow-Vecchi 62, wt std = 256 grams
RBW –.
Historia Numorum Italy 341.
Haeberlin p 55 – 56, plate 22, 17 – 20; wt range 34 – 54 grams; 45 examples; avg wt = 41.91 = 256 eq as
Garrucci lists a Mercury / Prow Right coin, but no Prow Left.
Kircheriano table 3a, #5B.