[ancients] a dozen Alexandrian potin tets

Don't. It is stressful when you find out after forty years that your coin is not the only one as you have always believed.

 

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Milne doesn't give scarcity ratings but Emmett does. You have to be careful when comparing these references as they are not always equivalent. Milne allocates a different number to different obverse legend breaks, minor bust variations, year letter positions etc. whereas Emmett lumps all coins of a reverse type to a single number where this single number has multiple entries indicating whic years that number applies to with a scarcity rating per year and thus you can see Emmett references written Emmett 813 (2) R4 meaning Emmett # 813, Year 2 and scarcity.

Emmett gives some detail on where he looked in a cross reference section at the back of his book. A closer look at Emmett makes me doubt the scaricty given to the Hadrian. This reverse type appears in two section in Milne with two different obverse legend variants. Milne 4 different coins of this type one with one legend type and three with a different legend but with different legend breaks. This Hadrian has obverse legend AVT KAIC TPAIANOC ADPIANOC.

You should use these as a guide to how scarce the types are but they are far from absolute. The fact that there aren't too many of these online is a good indication but again far from absolute.

Martin

 

Once again we each need to ask, "So what?" We each will have an answer. To me, legend spacings and placements of letters in the field mean nothing unless they indicate something more significant. For example, if one mint always used a certain break and another used the opposite, I might want to distinguish between the two. If a star added in the field was accompanied by a half gram weight reduction of the coin, I might want to separate the two. If, however, the die cutter came back from lunch with indigestion and forgot where he was supposed to stop with the legend and move to the other side, I can live without making the distinction. Obviously we do not always know which differences had a meaning and which were random but I tend to place the burden of proof of requiring a separate listing on the coin. After a student is able to explain why the difference exists, I get interested. Before that, not so much.

The exception to this is when the difference occurs in an area I consider my specialty and I maintain a hope of someday finding meaning to that difference. If there is a minor change in a coin of Septimius Severus, I want to know why. For example, the coin below is an absolute piece of junk and quite possibly unofficial but I had to have it because it is exactly the second denarius of Julia Domna where the split was DOM___NA not DO___MNA. I have a hundred and have seen thousands of these coins and was too stupid to buy the first one I saw years ago. As a result my penance was to pay a dealer I dislike more than I would ever think of paying for a piece of garbage (as if I would buy it for 2 cents otherwise). In this particular case the catalogs do not record legend splits so there is a great likelihood that no one else cares but I do. The same degree of unusual split on a coin of 199 other rulers would be met with my total apathy but here I am vulnerable. The rest of you might want to consider if your collection would be improved by adding a coin that is listed as rare/unique because of one letter or the placement of one letter. Would you pay ten times the normal price for this or would you rather have a coin that looked decent for the same money? There are several of us on this venue who have certain specialties that might cause us to take notice and pay. I even know what a couple of them are. Few are probably as irrational as mine which is obviously a meaningless error corrected or the work of a counterfeiter but it is a coin that is better off in my possession than in the junk pile where it really belongs. If I were to write a book cataloging the coins of Julia Domna, would I list this one under a separate number from the common version? Yes. Should I? Probably no.

 

Hah! Love that brutal honesty, Doug.

 

It's really quite interesting , eh? .... considering that these coins are usually 1500-2000 year old, there really isn't a great handle on their individual rarities, eh?

Sure, I put a lot of weight into David Sear's "relative" cost differences (aka as rarities, I guess?) ... and I guess ERIC II does also attempt to have a rarity scale/list ...

=> but nobody has really made a great effort to create an "Ancient Red Book" ... or am I incorrect?

Huh, perhaps that'll be the dream-thesis for one of our youngins? (or maybe that's what I'll do when I retire in 5 years?) ...

 

Sounds like what RIC tried to do.

 

vlaha => yah, I agree that ERIC II (RIC) gives a relative Roman Ruler Rarity Rating (ummm, an RRRR??) ... but David Sear does a better job of "estimating" an actual coin's rarity rating ...

blah-blah-blah ... I really have no idea ... I'm sure that you gurus have a sweeter-slant on this topic?

 

I like to think that our young numismatists will find something better to do with their lives than undertake a completely thankless and impossible task:

1. Rarity has next to nothing to do with value/market price. Condition minutiae are much more important. Many of our high value coins are quite common (Owls, Tribute Pennies). Most of us with any large number of coins probably have one that is the only survivor from that die set but no one cares. There are about 80 known EID MAR denarii of which the worst is worth much more than the sum of my possibly unique coins.

2. An ancient book with Red Book completeness, prices compiled from sales or reasonable estimates in 5 grades with all known varieties as minute as some of our Red Book varieties (1960 small and large date, close and wide AM, a plethora of overdates or over mintmarks) would (just a guess here) be something between 10 and 100 feet thick and have to sell for at least $10,000. Demand would be low.

3. No one actually tries to assemble a complete set after they pass the first beginner stage. Few agree on what a complete set is. There are some who consider all coins of one emperor to be the same for their purposes and would be happy with a Red Book ignoring reverses. David Vagi came close to that when he only listed rare types separately from the ordinary which he lumped together. How did that go over? He was not wrong when it came to market pricing but it was not what the book market really wanted to hear. They want catalog numbers. Disagree?

4. I like to think that the authors of RIC would not have presented rarity quite the way they did if they understood how it would be abused. It will be interesting to see how this is handled if there ever is a new RIC edition (not just a reprint).

 

That's it, dang-it!! => I'm buildin' that 100 foot high book!!

... ummm, but Im gonna call it stevex6's "30 meter ancient-monstrosity"