One of the books on my long term wish list was written by E Babelon in the 1880's. Today, I crossed it off my list. It has been on the list so long because it is in French, it is available on line for free in PDF, several reviewers say it has limited value, ...... I decided to buy it after paging through the on line book and seeing several lists of die symbols. If I need to "read" something I can use an on line translate site. Most of the RR coin books have repeated words that become easy to read. The seller's description is not in English either. BABELON E. – Description historique et chronologique des monnaies de la République Romaine vulgairement appelées monnaies Consulaires. Sala Bolognese, 1983. pp. 562 (vol. I), pp. 669 (vol. II) con illustrazioni b. n. 2 volumi. Ristampa anastatica dell’edizione originale di Parigi-Londra 1885-1886. Andrew McCabe's book review: Less Useful, or difficult to find Babelon: E. Babelon, Description historique et chronologique de monnaies de la république romaine (Paris, 1885). The handbook on which the "family name" organisation and numbering of Roman Republican coins is based. French. Except for the prow series it does not include aes grave, and has limited coverage of the early post-212BC coinage with symbols / letters. Its line drawings of scarcer RR bronzes fill in some gaps not covered by other books and I occasionally refer to it to clarify the original arrangement behind Roman Silver Coins, but otherwise it has been superseded by other handbooks, except to the extent to the extent that its numbering system is pervasive whenever RSC1 is quoted.
I know some of you hate digital books, but a lot of old books that were nearly impossible to find and out of print forever are now available through amazon kindle for a few dollars, pennies, and in some cases even free, and that includes quite a few ancient coin surveys and books from the 19th century
I have several coin books in Russian, and I don't understand Russian. But you can use Google Translate on your iphone, it has a camera function for reading text in a book, and although clearly there are many faults in the translations, it helps. I'm sure Google Translate works better with French than with Russian. Occasionally French words are comparable with English words. A lot of information in coin books is in charts and easy understandable. So - I would say, don't be afraid of foreign languages, you may obtain a lot of information from those books.
I have several of the new reprints of old books believing that paper was better than online copies of the same files. This includes volumes of BMC (Alexandria and Sicily) and some of harder to find Asian series. They are not totally worthless but they are in no case as valuable to me as I had hoped when compared to either more recent books (Emmett on Alexandria) or free online resources (the Magna Graecia site, CNG, acsearch, 100 others?). Don't count on the plates. Some are legible; some not. The problem I see with many books including those that are in print and not cheap is that you have to study up to separate the really good ones from the ones really not worth what you have to pay for them. You might make a profit selling your lightly used copy of classic books but what is the cash value of an expensive book like RIC when it is replaced by a new edition (Volume 1 and half of volume 2) with updated information and new numbers? What was the effect on the price of the books on coins of Alexander the Great when Price came out? Language is a small problem compared to bad information in whatever language it was written. There can be enjoyment in reading the old books but, old or new, read critically. Information that was wrong in 1917 is not improved in 2017, it is just in Public Domain. For the record, I like Cohen for the easy to follow numbering system even if he missed a few of the rare types and used a language not English (although Cohen French is about as easy as any foreign language book I have ever seen). I would not choose it over RIC, BMC or online resources but I do still enjoy having the eight volumes I have had for years. Now that it is free online, I suppose I would not buy it again but I'm not throwing it out either. Is Babelon in the same category?
I have one book (Rtveladze) that is trilingual Russian, English and Uzbeck. Another (Shagalov/Kuznetsov) is bilingual Russian/English. I love bilingual books when I have the slightest exposure to the language (last took Russian in 1964) and find some things were made clear stumbling through the Russian compared to the provided English. Perhaps we should look at Babelon as an excuse to learn a little French???
Babelon(and most every other reference published earlier) is certainly of far less value than Crawford, though the line drawings are, in my opinion, an easier way to try and read some of the coins and their symbols than the plates in Crawford, especially for the bronzes. The plates in the later reprint of Crawford are not great at all, so as a companion, a book like Babelon can be nice, but the information is so out of date that it is of limited value and while many sources have augmented Crawford since it was published in 1974, it is still the best single reference there is. In addition, as you mentioned there are numerous easily searched online sources with high resolution images of coins just a click away. Many of Crawford's plate coins come from the BnF or BMC anyways, so in many cases a better photograph can be found online of the exact coin from the Crawford plates. The biggest argument I can see for the usefulness of a book like Babelon is the familial organization system that it pioneered which has been continued by RSC. This is largely a preference thing, but I honestly prefer a chronological system like the one used by Crawford simply because I prefer to view the coins in the context of related issues chronologically rather than related issues from the same family that might be separated by several decades
I love books. But having said that, I keep to those that I can read. As a dealer I do have to keep some on hand just for the referencing numbers. But as a collector a book does me no good when I cant read about the coins themselves, the methods and arrangement of the mints, etc. Sadly much of this is missing from a lot of major works. The Roman Provincial Coins series sadly doesnt have as much information I would like. Too many books are just simply catalogs. So...I keep to those I can read (I also have the Shagalov work Doug mentioned) and I greatly appreciate it as I would never be able to read Russian.
I think it is common (though not universal) for ancient coin collectors to love reference books. I certainly do, especially sets from the early 20th century, there was just something special about numismatics in that period. I do use online references and appreciate them very much, but there is something very special about pulling a book off my shelf and leafing through the pages either to look up a specific coin or just for pleasure.
A question: Are the line drawings found in my 1967 2nd edition of Roman Silver Coins vol. 1 taken from Babelon? They are wonderful. As a photographer of coins I really prefer these good drawings to poor photos. I also have the 1978 3rd edition which replaced the line drawings with so-so photos of nice coins. I would say the 2nd edition was preferable for the drawings except that Crawford was published between the two so the 3rd has cross references to BMC, Crawford and Sydenham while the 2nd only lists Sydenham and BMC. I really suggest you buy any cheap copies of the 1967 RSC vol 1 that come your way.
i collect antique books also amongst other things. ironic that the authors name is Babelon...poetic justice?...
