Today I completed a major chapter in my ongoing ERIC work with the draft for Gordian III. If anyone reading this is a specialist in this area who would like to check my work for errors and additions please let me know. My email is rasiel@dirtyoldbooks.com The next ERIC will be a major overhaul of the second edition. To use Gordian as an example, it took me about two weeks of day-in, day-out work to finish the Gordian section ten years ago. This next section took me 174 days (a week shy of six months). Even though the pace wasn't as frenetic the amount of data is vastly larger. I'll fall short, of course, but am aiming for the definitive catalog of each and every Roman emperor! I'm encouraged that even with almost zero support from the ancient coin dealer channels, the 2nd edition somehow still managed to outsell every other Roman coin book on Amazon. Not bad for an indie! And when the next edition gets published it will be a dramatic improvement. That keeps me going! Copies of ERIC II now selling for just sixty bucks https://www.amazon.com/Eric-Encyclo...X0DER&qid=1565481620&s=merchant-items&sr=1-17 Rasiel
I'm barely a fifth of the way done. 2025? Even that seems a bit optimistic. And to the second part of your question Doug, it will probably be broken up into six different physical books sold as a set. That's the working plan but who knows. Maybe by then printed books will be a thing of the past. At this rate I think that within another decade cursive writing will be about as familiar to kids as Mayan glyphs are to us. Rasiel
I own both the first 2 ERICs (the 1st was gifted to me by my pop as my first book for coin attribution, the 2nd my wife got me for xmas) and I wish you the best in your studies and labors. Our own @Sallent was pretty Gordy3 obsessed, though recently downgraded his G3 collection as I recall... Though may still be working off a serious birthday hangover (belated happy birthday Sallent!)
Here's the Gordian III draft. Even if Gordy's not your cup of tea you can take a quick glance to compare how much more informative it is compared to the last two books. In the last hour I've already had two more additions and a correction so don't bother using the numbering. It's really just the "teaser trailer" but will give you a good idea of what to expect. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Kq8rqJ62WHAWAKjl6CO4J9QPraQOrRLI Ps. Quick primer for those not familiar with "ERICese" In a line such as The numbers on the left are the description of this particular variant made up of four descriptors listed on the header plus a mint code. In this case the little red number points to a footnote with additional information at the end of the section. What follows are real-life sales of this variant with condition, venue and date. These are meant to give you an idea of what to expect to pay for one. The next column is the market rarity. At a count of 453 this one is a massively common variant (which explains why even an EF coin sold for just $26!). All tallies, for all emperors, are date constrained from the earliest catalog entries in the database through the cutoff date of 12/31/2013 to retain consistency. Lastly, the numbers in the reference columns are listed to the most-used reference (typically RIC) followed by actual examples of that variant that are accessible on coryssa. For example, here you could see an example using URLs http://coryssa.org/794 or http://coryssa.org/965 or http://coryssa.org/824124 Rasiel
I own Eric II and Aorta and am astounded that they are the work of one person. They’re worth many times what I paid. Looking forward to preordering Eric III.
Ok I seen this and had to check it out. How am I doing? Just joking of course. Congratulations on your book.
I like the idea of red lettering irregular entries (errors or barbarous or both?). I still object to the one sided photos which make it harder to visualize any complete coin. By the time of publication, perhaps all the people who like books on paper will be dead so you won't have that to face. I do fear that any price quotes a decade old will add little to a 2025 publication but constant updating would be impossible. Come to think of it, the whole idea seems impossible but you are making good effort. I might reword the statement that Gordian was the last to make denarii to avoid the technical error from the rare Philip/Decius. Something like "last silver denarii in quantity" or "for general circulation.
I have ERIC and ERIC II and whilst I look forward to the idea of ERIC III I very much doubt that I will own one simply due to the dramatic increase in shipping cost across the pond in recent years. Thecost to shipp books is greater than the cost of the books themselves now. I remember helping out with a few sections of ERIC II. You have taken on yet another enormous task.
Some context , before I tread on potentially controversial ground. I love books, and ERIC is among the books that I find very useful - especially for it's compact representation of indices that let me easily scan types, legends, busts and images. If there were an Eric 2.1 in lighter weight volumes with the same information - I would buy it tomorrow to complement (no book is ever replaced) my hefty ERIC II volume, and its many bookshelf companions. I think it is fun to see ERIC III as a work in progress. Now for potential controversy: books are a very poor medium for the complex information space that we navigate. There are just too many axes/facets/dimensions from which one would like to research a coin or coins: - date (44 B.C.) - Emperor/person (Augustus, Cicero...) - Symbols/icons (libertas, venus,...) - Legend (IMP MAXIMIANUS AVG...) - Historical event (first mithradatic war...) - Condition (wear, patina,...) - Literature reference (papers, books, journals,...) - Author/researcher (Sear, Mattingly, Crawford, ...) - Hypothesis (the elephant is or is not Caesar, Emesa is the mint, Parthamaspates is really Sanatrukes son of Meherdates, ...) - Hoard evidence (Massagne, Beau Street,...) - Location/place (Bath, Rome, Lyon, ...) - Metal (AV, AR, AE, BI) - Price range ($$) - Rarity (issue, market, die counts, ...) - Photographs/images - Error types (centering, cracks, corrected, misspelled, brockage...) - Provenance (who owned what coins) - Discussion (debate and sharing of ideas) - et.c. I could go on, but perhaps already overworking the thought As demonstrated in this forum daily - there is too much knowledge to allow anyone to be expert and up-to-date for a subset of ancients e.g."Roman Imperial" coins. An edited, crowd sourced electronic resource could be so much more powerful. A fresh, modern approach could, in my view, not only have powerful research implications, but also commercial implications. Imagine that you could now find for sale and buy a coin using a complex subset of these dimensions. Many of these dimensions can be searched today electronically, the glue between them needs some work.
Thanks to everyone for the kind comments and suggestions. This project is soul food for me. It's just what I'd do even if I was 100% certain it wouldn't get published or make money. I'm what they call high-functioning autistic.
Indeed! The closest is RIC 174 but that's for a spear and this is a scepter. Cool, thanks for the submissinon (can I have your full name?) Rasiel
Rasiel I was going to buy one of your books from your link . Would like to get an autographed one if they are on amazon.
