Hello everyone! Just curious if anyone could offer suggestions for a book that discusses Severan provincials or maybe Roman provincials if that is too specific. Thanks!
http://rpc.ashmus.ox.ac.uk/ http://rpc.ashmus.ox.ac.uk/project/ Watch the above site for more volumes as they are done. We have to realize that Volume V will be huge and will be a while until done. I assume you know Sear, Greek Imperial Coins and their Values. https://www.amazon.com/Greek-Imperial-Values-Coinages-Empire/dp/0900652594
The best single book on Roman provincials is "Roman Provincial Coins" by Kevin Butcher. On my page of book recommendations: http://augustuscoins.com/ed/numis/learnmore.html I wrote: Greek imperials (so named for the Greek legends on coins minted in Roman imperial times) are beginning to be better known as "Roman Provincial." This is a huge and difficult, but very interesting, subject. No one book will get you very far. Greek Imperial Coins and Their Values by David Sear (Sear again!) is the only one-volume list-style reference. It lists 6000 coins and has many pages of helpful notes, but the great majority of Greek imperial coins you buy will not be exactly in there. The field is too vast to be well-covered by a list of only 6000 types! But it is a very good book within that limitation. Roman Provincial Coins: An Introduction to the Greek Imperials, by Kevin Butcher, is an excellent introduction with a great deal of "meat". It can be read again and again. A slim book, it has excellent photographs of 95 coins and 258 line drawings of coins. It has many maps so you can tell where all those cities are. I must have already read it 8 times, and scanned it many more, and I still like it. If you might be interested in Roman Provincial coins, buy this book. Ancient Coin Collecting IV: Roman Provincial Coins, by Wayne Sayles, is an attractive beginner's book. It will give you some picture of what is out there in the field. The illustrations are of very high grade coins that are quite exceptional. This is unfortunate, because collectors will find that it is almost impossible to collect coins like those. It is an okay place to begin, but you could begin with Butcher's fine work which is better and will take you further into this complex field. If you would like to know more about the cities in which your Roman provincial coins were minted, I strongly recommend Michael Grant's A Guide to the Ancient World which is a 728-page alphabetical listing of ancient cities and facts about them. It has recently been reprinted by Barnes and Noble, so it is not as expensive as such a massive work might be.
Thank you both! I was doing some searching on the CoinTalk and rediscovered your link @Valentinian . @dougsmit I had heard of it but never read the Sear volume.
