Your opinion on RRC millenium I by Sear ?

Discussion in 'Ancient Coins' started by oldfinecollector, Feb 25, 2020.

  1. oldfinecollector

    oldfinecollector Well-Known Member

    I have a pretty small collection of Roman Republic Coin, I use the free Crawford database but I would like to buy the Roman Republic Couns & their Value Millennium édition so would like your opinion if it was useful for you ?

    Sear give estimates in USD for 3 states of grading as it was in 2000 he wrote it do you think it is still workable ? Do I need to adjust estimate with inflation rate between 2000 and 2020 or prices stay the same.

    I know that it just an idea of prices as the market prices are done by auction and all coins are différents depends of your taste and budget.

    Thanks to share advice on that at buying this book is an investment but it perhaps can help a lot to put all couns type from historical point of view too what the Crowford doesn’t do. And you got also in the catalog the twelves Cesar too.
     
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  3. akeady

    akeady Well-Known Member

    Sear's book isn't "Roman Republic Coins and their Value", it's "Roman Coins and their Values". Volume I covers Roman Republican coins and coins of the 12 Caesars.

    I have it and it's a pretty good book - it doesn't cover every coin type that exists, but many of the more common types and popular rare types too.
    The prices aren't very useful - it will give an idea of what's common and what's rare, but not really what to pay for anything.

    Crawford's "Roman Republican Coinage" is much better for Republican coins - nearly all types covered and with a lot more information than Sear. I suppose you're using either potdevin.fr or the ANS's CRRO database? The coins on those sites are listed by RRC number, but there's little other information - the book (in 2 volumes) has much more information. With the paperback edition, it's pretty cheap now too -
    https://www.amazon.co.uk/Roman-Repu...=Roman+Republican+Coins&qid=1582646543&sr=8-4

    If you collect Imperatorial coins struck in the late Republic, Sear's "History and Coinage of the Roman Imperators" is an excellent book, putting the coins into historical context. Of the many books Sear has written, and I have bought, this is my favourite.

    Actually, if you only collect silver coins, the little "Roman Silver Coins" volume I -
    https://www.amazon.co.uk/Roman-Silv...ords=Roman+Silver+coins&qid=1582646918&sr=8-7
    - is a good book - small and cheap and covers more or less all silver coins from the Republic and Augustus. Other volumes cover later coins. There's little information, but useful cross-references to Crawford and Sydenham.

    ATB,
    Aidan.
     
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  4. oldfinecollector

    oldfinecollector Well-Known Member

    Many thanks for these Feedbacks. For the moment I use the CRRO database that help a bit but It is a good idea to got the Crawford in paper books thanks for you useful links.

    sincerely

    Oliver
     
  5. dougsmit

    dougsmit Member

    The problem with any price guide for ancients is that there are 3000 grades rather than three. Even prices realized for the exact coin can be deceptive since you never know who was bidding and who they felt the need to outbid. It is not all that unusual to find coin that sold 20 years ago for more than today and the opposite somewhere in-between. Opinions vary a great deal when it comes to how much to discount for a crack versus how much for a bit of roughness or an uneven strike. Many ancients left the mint in less than perfect condition due to factors that have nothing to do with wear. In modern terms, almost all are 'details' coins in some respect. Pay what a coin is worth to you. The guides will give relative values for types with some accuracy but will not tell you what to pay at any specific time and place.
     
  6. oldfinecollector

    oldfinecollector Well-Known Member

    Thanks Dough I share your philosophy, I saw this RCV I more as a manner to know more and an help to choose what I want to have in my collection and classified. A manner not to be blind as use of database is not so great to have an overview.
     
  7. Carausius

    Carausius Brother, can you spare a sestertius?

    As a collector of Roman Republican coins, I very much HATE the millenium edition vol 1. In this edition, Sear has split the Republican silver and bronze coins into separate sections. You lose sense of how the Roman Republic issued its coinage when issues are split like this. For a few dollars more, you could get a paperback set of Crawford (the standard reference for Roman Republic) which presents the coinage in a unified way.
     
  8. oldfinecollector

    oldfinecollector Well-Known Member

    Thanks will do
     
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  9. DonnaML

    DonnaML Well-Known Member

    For looking up Republican silver coins, I find Vol. I of Sear's Roman Silver Coins infinitely more useful as a practical matter than Vol. I of Sear's Roman Coins and their Values (Millennium Edition). The simple reason is that the Republican coins in RCV are arranged chronologically, whereas the coins in RSC are arranged in the traditional way, by moneyer. (RSC takes its numbering system from the old Cohen catalog.) It's awfully hard to look up an undated coin in a chronological catalog if you don't already know at least the approximate year of issue. It's a lot easier to find when the coins are arranged by moneyer, given that (except for the early anonymous issues) the moneyer's name (in some form) is on each coin. Plus, that's still the way most dealers index their Republican coins, as do V-coins and Ma-Shops.

    Nonetheless, I have both, because once you identify a coin, RCV has more, and more up to date, information. As others have pointed out, the values in both -- especially RSC -- are out of date. And Crawford has more information than both of them. By the way, there are free downloads available on the Internet of both volumes of Crawford; the only thing missing from the downloads is the plates in Volume II. But there are other places to find images of Republican coins.
     
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  10. oldfinecollector

    oldfinecollector Well-Known Member

    Thanks now I understand that as a beginner as was lost without those books using only Internet databases.
     
  11. red_spork

    red_spork Triumvir monetalis

    These downloads are illegal and at $100 for the paperback reprint Crawford is cheaper than a nice denarius. You should buy the book.
     
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  12. DonnaML

    DonnaML Well-Known Member

    Thanks. That makes a lot of sense if the work is still under copyright - I will.

    Edited to add: Done.
     
    Last edited: Feb 26, 2020
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  13. DonnaML

    DonnaML Well-Known Member

    I must say that in my limited experience in other areas, copyright holders usually issue takedown notices when they become aware of illegal download links. I'm surprised they haven't done so here, because the links for downloading Crawford have been there for years.
     
  14. red_spork

    red_spork Triumvir monetalis

    Numismatic publishers rarely do this. Numismatic books aren't huge moneymakers, which is why so many books are out of print and command such high secondary prices. They aren't in demand enough even for a large print run. Thankfully Crawford is in-demand enough that the publisher saw fit to release a fairly inexpensive paperback reprint.

    To answer op's original question though, in my opinion given how cheap Crawford is, Sear is not something I'd recommend for anyone who actually plans to collect Republican coins. When it cost $500 for a copy of Crawford I think it made more sense to recommend new collectors buy Sear's RCV & RSC, but realistically there's very little in Sear that you can't find from looking at Numismatica Ars Classica sales 61 and 63 for free online, whereas there is a lot of information in Crawford you won't find in Sear nor will you find anywhere online.

    There are newer sources for many areas too, and some of them are online, but Crawford is the starting point for studying and understanding Roman Republic coins and I doubt any seasoned collector of them would disagree with that.
     
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  15. oldfinecollector

    oldfinecollector Well-Known Member

    Doing a research on EBay to buy the Crawford I find a guy who sale the 2 volume in PDF to download for something like 3 € .

    For me it is a copyright violation and anyway I prefer to use a paper book so will ask one of my dealer who sell numismatic books too if he can have it for the normal price which is less than 100 usd for paperback in 2 volumes. With my dealer I got a discount on books and I have not to pay shipping.
     
  16. DonnaML

    DonnaML Well-Known Member

    There are still several good reasons, though, to own a copy of RSC vol. I: it's inexpensive (you can buy a copy for under $20); its alphabetical-by-moneyer arrangement is very user-friendly; and, perhaps above all, it's one small, highly portable volume. Which allowed me to bring it to the NYINC last month, and to use it frequently to look up various coins much faster than I could have with RCV, Crawford, or even any of the several online databases.
     
    Last edited: Feb 26, 2020
  17. DonnaML

    DonnaML Well-Known Member

    Well, that was fast. I ordered it at about 4 am last night, and it arrived late this afternoon. (For all its faults, Amazon has its advantages!) It's nice to be able to browse through the two volumes the old-fashioned way. The reproductions of the plates aren't of the best quality; I suspect that the originals were better. But they're certainly good enough for identification purposes, and better photos are easily available online if one wants to consult them.
     
  18. Valentinian

    Valentinian Well-Known Member

    I like it for this. I don't want the AE mixed in with the silver. Like, most, almost all my RR coins are silver. I want them together and not divided by AE.

    I use volume I of RSC (which is not written by Sear) because many European sellers identify Republican coins by family and not chronologically. Many coins have the family name on them and they can be looked up in RSC and that gives the date. I tried mightily to learn the dates of Republican issues and I even made a website on dating them:

    http://augustuscoins.com/ed/Repub/TimelineTable.html

    You'd think after all that study I could look at a Republican type and give you the date, but often I cannot. So, I prefer RCV I for its chronological order (and separation of silver) but I use RSC I quite a bit too.

    About prices. Why does anyone think that the "grade" of a Republican coin ought to translate to a correct "price" in a book? We are not buying US coins in slabs. Grading and pricing of ancient coins is many times as complicated as a simple "price guide" relationship would suggest. Read @dougsmit 's posts for a proper amount of cynicism.

    However, a price guide is useful for comparative prices. If a number of coins in a row are 50 pounds in some grade and the next one is 85 pounds, you can expect to pay more now for that type than for the other types. Don't expect any price guide for ancient coins to do more than that.

    Personally I find that quite useful. If there is a Republican type I don't know well in a condition that might be $100 for some coins I do know well, I can look it up. Then when the book says "60 pounds" for the types I know and "200 pounds" for the new type I don't know, I now understand it might go for $300 (or a lot more or somewhat less). Price guides are mostly right about relative values. But, you have to already know some current prices before the book values can be converted to actual current dollar values.
     
    Last edited: Feb 26, 2020
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  19. DonnaML

    DonnaML Well-Known Member

    Sorry; you're absolutely correct. I completely forgot that H.A Seaby wrote RSC Vol. I (among others). Although David Sear did the revised edition, along with Robert Loosley. Sear was also involved with Vols. III and V.
     
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