My pick would be Roma. Fantastic high quality photos, coin descriptions. What are your favs????? John
Me too! I keep them all for reference material, probably have 600 catalogues Still have all my Tkalec/ NFA catalogues, at a time when I started collecting in a serious way.....spending my own hard earned $$$$.
Roma's catalogs are fabulous. As for the best quality coin photography among currently active auction houses, Künker is hard to beat.
I'll go against the grain and say NGSA. While their catalogs are less frequent, they are really top-notch. But, my favorite recent catalog/book for production value was the JDL Collection. Tradart always puts out great material and the design work which went into the catalog and earlier release of the book is very noticeable.
Kuenker, Dix Noonan Webb, Artemide Aste, and Leu for me. Hohn is also quite good. Roma has never sent me a catalogue regardless of the fact that I have spent in their auctions.
..i don't have any auctionhouse catalogs, but there's something to be said of the company when they become collectors items themselves..
As a dealer of over 30 years I used to have countless catalogs. I know, some people sell them, especially the uber nice hardbound examples with the best offerings and photography. But when I moved from a large house to a small house there was no place to store them. I gave away as many as I could, but most of them ended up in the recycle bin. It can be very hard to pass on auction catalogs. One would be surprised. I now only hold on to the very best (with the idea of passing them on). I think I have maybe less than a dozen and would be happy to send them to anyone who is willing to pay the media mail postage, within the US only. PM me if you are interested. I would be very happy to give them away.
I would agree with Ancient Joe, TIF. Kunker has supberb catalogues, never had NGSA, Tradart catalogues. But their material is fantastic. Last coin, from Kunker looked so beautifull in hand, even though auction photos were exceptional.
I kept the NFA catalogs from their hey day. Those are pretty amazing. I also have the five volume hard bound Hunt sales. I could never afford anything they had that I wanted but the catalogs are beautiful. Now I just wish they all would stop sending me more paper to store....
I think CNG, NAC, Roma, Nomos and Gorny &Mosch. All put out great catalogs. I cannot comment on others as I do not receive printed catalogs from them. I do not keep many. I tend to keep CNG catalogs or any auction that features a really comprehensive collection eg. BCD or RBW. Otherwise it just gets to be too much.
I love auction catalogs and loved them even more before the internet made searches so easy and therefore paper catalogs less useful. Recently I have been discarding notes I took took on 5x8 cards in the pre-internet days categorized by emperor (How much did an Aelius denarius cost? I looked it up in my notes giving firm, issue, lot number grade and price, from numerous catalogs. Then I pulled the catalogs from shelves to see the images. It was an extremely slow process, compared to now.) Many of those catalogs have been sold long ago but some I have kept. I agree with the previous posts that those firms mentioned have excellent catalogs. CNG's Triton, Roma, and NAC are among the best. I keep all those issues. But catalogs I like the best are ones with a remarkable selection by a true collector who emphasized a particular theme. http://augustuscoins.com/ed/catalogs/Themes.html I figure they have really good examples and if I see, say, a Turkoman bronze, and I think I might like it and can research it. If is as good as the ones I see in my catalogs filed in my magazine boxes under "Turkoman bronze," then I know it is outstanding and worth having. (You can click on "Turkoman bronze" at that link above and see the best pre-internet catalogs I know about.) All the categories on that page have had some catalogs with outstanding collections of them. Those catalogs are worth having as reference works. On the other hand, the typical paper catalog, even one with a large number of beautiful coins of all eras, gives me no reason to save it unless I can identify something special that will cause me to want to consult it when I am studying something. For example, if you want to collect river gods on coins, you must obtain Helios 3 (2009, April 29-30) 782 ancients among 1113. 7 Celtic, 1 RR imit, 60 G, 10 RR, 204 RI, 17 Byz, 2 Gepids, and an amazing collection of 482 Roman and Roman provincials with river gods. An amazing collection of river gods on Roman and Roman provincial coins (482) It is not surprising I am unaware of any other catalog remotely approaching that representation. Catalogs have only a small fraction of the value they used to have (both value in dollars and value in terms of hard-to-obtain information). But some of them can show you what a theme collection looks like and those are enjoyable and still worthwhile.
I am a fan of auction catalogues. Whenever I win a coin in a auction that has a catalogue, I always ask the auction house for a copy of the catalogue. I enjoy having the catalogue that matches the coins in my collection. For me it adds to the experience of owning the coins. Of course it is also nice to have a record of the provenance for the coin. One of my favourite catalogues is NAC 92 Part II. One of my coins is lot 2133 in the catalogue. The catalogue is notable because it contained many coins from the E.E. Clain-Stefanelli collection. My coin once belonged to her. I really like being able to trace the history of my coin. Knowing that my coin once belonged to her adds to my enjoyment of the coin because it adds to the story of my coin. I also have the catalogue from the last Jacquier auction. It is notable because like the NAC catalogue it contains the coins of a collection. In this case the auction features the collection of Phillipe Gysen. I was fortunate enough to win 2 coins from this auction. One of them is unique and published only in this catalogue. For that reason this catalogue is an important resource. I could give many other examples. For me, it is important to have the auction catalogues that contain my coins. They are a part of the history of the coins and as such are very useful still.