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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;lrbguy, post: 3140427, member: 88829&quot;]The others have given you beginner references designed to help you develop your own rationale for collecting.&nbsp; That&#039;s great.&nbsp; But most beginners struggle with certain technical points that are not directly helped by those texts, although any of them will assist in a partial way.&nbsp; However, for Roman Imperial it is imperative that you develop some skill right away in learning how to READ the coins.</p><p><br /></p><p>With that in mind, if you are drawn to Roman imperial, then there are two how-to guides and references I will recommend, one is printed and the other is online:</p><p><br /></p><p>The textual approach:</p><p><font size="6"><b>Reading and Dating Roman Imperial Coins </b></font></p><p><font size="6"><b>By Zander H. Klawans</b></font></p><p><br /></p><p><img src="https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/vxUAAOSwJ95bSkq1/s-l500.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p>Start with inscriptions in Late Roman Bronze, such as the coins of Constantine and sons from the 4th century.&nbsp; They are readily available, and will challenge your reading skills, but with far fewer abbreviations to stumble over than the coins of earlier emperors (Trajan being the most challenging in general).&nbsp; Klawans teaches you the logic of naming, and keys to titlature and gives you lists of inscriptions to try out.&nbsp; This is great for the verbal approach, but what if the coin is so poor that you can&#039;t make out the inscriptions?</p><p><br /></p><p>The graphic approach.</p><p><br /></p><p>The language of imaging was systematized, for the collector of Late Roman Bronze coins specifically, by Guido Bruuk, a German scholar who created a picture guide to imaging details in the designs of most of the known late bronze coinage especially of the 4th century.&nbsp; His original book is in German and has been translated into English, but it has also been revised and edited as an online website by Eduardo Dargent of Lima Peru, called <a href="https://www.tesorillo.com/aes/home.htm" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.tesorillo.com/aes/home.htm" rel="nofollow">Tesorillo</a>.&nbsp; Follow this link to its home page.</p><p>If broken, here is the url:&nbsp; <a href="https://www.tesorillo.com/aes/home.htm" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.tesorillo.com/aes/home.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.tesorillo.com/aes/home.htm</a></p><p><br /></p><p>The point of this graphic guide is to help you become familiar with design details that are distinctive to the issues of a particular ruler or one of the mints that produced the coins.&nbsp; This approach will allow you to attribute a coin even if you can&#039;t read it, but THAT will help you in learning to read the coin as well.</p><p><br /></p><p>By working back and forth between these two guides, you will develop strong skills in attributing coins, which is one of the great satisfying tasks in collecting ancients.&nbsp; Not a bad way to start as you read about how to design a collection.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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