Collecting Focus

I have to agree I have seen many beautiful examples.

 

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Generally I buy what I like. I don't feel bound to be caught up with fads or the Jones'.

 

The temptation for a specialization is good because the ancient world is so vast. Helps shrink it down into a manageable zone for a collector. With that said I still don’t have one after a year of collecting though I hope it comes to me eventually.

 

Welcome to the dark side @britannia40
There are as many collecting focus as different collectors. Ladies are great, and so many other themes are great too !

Q

 

I guess my current focus is completing my 12 Caesars and my Crisis of the Third Century Official Rulers' set.

Longer term focus: Probably Gordian III coinage and Roman Republic coinage...

Even longer term focus: Greek and Celtic coinage.

Focus so long I may not be alive by the time I get there: Contemporary ancient forgeries.

 

Crisis of the Third Century Official Rulers' set. What does this consist of?

 

All the officially recognized rulers of the Sessesionist Empires for which there is coinage:

Gallic: Postumus, Marius, Victorinus, Tetricus I and Tetricus II.

Britanic: Carausius, Allectus

Palmyra: Vaballathus

Plus a coin of each officially recognized Roman Emperor from the beginning of the Crisis to the one that ended it: From Alexander Severus to Diocletian.

What it skipps over is the little known obscure usurpers of the era, but every "who's who" of this chaotic era of Roman history where the empire fractured into pieces and seemed on the verge of collapse, is covered by this set.

I should mention that I don't think anyone else is necessarily building a set like this. It is my own creation born out of my own desire to learn more about and become more involved in this period of Roman history which I find terribly fascinating. That's the beauty of collecting, you can make up your own sets if you don't want to put together what everyone else typically does.

 

@britannia40 By the way, nice bust of Plautila. I've always felt sorry for what happened to her, but in the world of Imperial politics there was no other way her life could end after her father's plot against Caracalla. You can't exactly stay married to the daughter of a traitor, and you can't release a disgruntled former empress into the world either so she can plot with generals and disgruntled officials to raise a revolt against you. The whole thing was Septimius Severus' fault though. I've often thought it would have been better for him to kill Caracalla and passed the empire to Geta.

Anyway, here is my coin of this unfortunate girl.

 

That's a great portrait @Sallent

 

I could not agree more. I believe the reason more people do not do a set like this is the difficulty many of us would have excluding the impossible/expensive ones like Laelianus and Zenobia. You would not be including Vaballathus were it not for those two headed ones with Aurelian. His solo coins are as hard as his mother's. I have seen sets attempted honoring coins issued in the last year of reign of the emperor which were dated to show that date without assumptions. Sure all coins of short term rulers (Otho, Pertinax) are 'last' but this collection was looking for TRP III Geta and other last timers. How many rulers over age 60 were there? How many rulers lasted over 30 years? So many choices.