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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Gao, post: 680312, member: 19409&quot;]Largely, you have to tell from what you can find on places like vcoins or at auctions. You&#039;ll eventually get an understanding for at least the rough price ranges for each emperor. Getting accurate rarity and prices is always really awkard when it comes to ancient coins, since there are so many minor variations that people often don&#039;t care much about, and someone with a metal detector in Bulgaria can dig up a hord full of something that was rare until just then. That has happened plenty of times. There&#039;s also the factor that since the dies for these coins were all carved by hand, the quality and style of work can vary substantially even in what&#039;s considered the same exact type. The conditions of and problems with these coins are also extremely diverse, since so many things can happen to them over the centuries, so they can often be awkward to grade (you&#039;ll notice that ancients collectors almost never bother with the 70 point system). Because of this, prices and rarity are usually a bit harder to determine with certainty than with modern coins.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>There are a some books that provide rarity and prices. The major reference for imperial Roman coins is a series called <i>Roman Imperial Coins</i> (usually referred to as just RIC). It has a rarity system based on how many examples of each type were found in British museums when each volume was researched. There are problems with this, as such things can easily go out of date in the age of the metal detector (and most volumes in it are decades old), and museums often try to aquire coins of particular historical interest and probably won&#039;t put much effort into acquiring minor types of things they already have, so the data can be a bit skewed. Some people say that one shouldn&#039;t pay attention to these ratings at all. These volumes are very expensive, but your library may have them. For some of the more common coins from the third century or later, you may want to check out the RIC spreadsheets that Helvetica made <a href="http://www.catbikes.ch/coinstuff/coins-ric.htm" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.catbikes.ch/coinstuff/coins-ric.htm" rel="nofollow">here</a>, as they do provide the rarities from RIC. Another source you may want to check out is David R. Sear&#039;s <i>Roman Coins and Their Values</i> series. It&#039;s a bit expensive as well, but the rarities should be more up to date, and it does in fact provide prices (though I don&#039;t know how accurately, as I do not have any of this).</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>When you collect ancients, you don&#039;t get to have all the clear, easy answers and ways to collect that you find in modern coins, but I think that that&#039;s half the fun.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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