Collecting all the roman emperors

Hello everyone,
this is my first post in this forum so I hope I dont do anything wrong here. I collect monarchies coins - and medals by ruler from all time periods but the roman empire is my main focus. So while trying to collect all those emperors I did a little progress summary with this picture lately:

Now I wonder how many of you here try to get all those emperors and if anyone else ever did something like this picture I created here.
Btw this was a little inspired by some expensive posters about this I have seen in the internet but it always angers me a bit how many errors still appear in those (I hope I havent done to many of those).
This summary kind of ends where my collecting makes a big break until Justin I. but I dont own many of the byzantine emperors yet.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

Great effort, and very commendable, you will come across some emperors that are expensive but just skip them and get what you can afford as later down the track you might find provincial coins that suit your budget, A big welcome to cointalk and looking forward to your future posts.

 

I once aspired to collect a coin of each of the Roman emperors - including those of the Byzantine and Holy Roman sort - bookended by Julius Caesar and Napoleon.

I didn't get very far.

 

That's a nice collection, although I put together a set of the 5 good emperors, there are couple factors stopping me from making a set of all the emperors!
1. Cost- I'd rather spend money on coins that I find interesting than to just tick the box (I have done this in the past and regret spending 100s on sub-par coins that I had to have).
2. I just don't care for emperors during the crisis period (expect Aurelian), and Constantine era onward to justify hunting down every single emperor.

 

Have you seen these posters?

https://dirtyoldcoins.com/?category=Posters

 

@Ancient Aussie Thank you, yeah thats kind of what I'am doing right now due to my quite limited budget.

@JayAg47 The third century emperors are very interesting too even while Aurelian definetly is the militarily most successful of them. Sadly the sources are scarce for many of them so I guess that plays a big part in the low interest into them. But those troubled times brought some interesting people unto the throne.

@maridvnvm I have seen those some time ago and some more later but the principle was nearly the same.

 

I wonder how many of the photos on those posters were taken by the person selling them.

 

The poster for Imperial states that the photographs are courtesy of Numismatica Ars Classica, CNG and Dirty Old Coins.

 

Great start so far! You are gonna run into some tough ones.
I like your layout. I may steal it for my own coins

Welcome!

 

mhhhh…. If they are emperors why there are caesars in the same poster? Even some augusti are displayed with coins as Caesar. Never seen a bad poster like this.

 

..an honorable goal to get'em all...

 

I agree with JayAg47 on this. While the poster is a big effort, I would like it a lot more if it retained the entire obverse of the coin chosen for display rather than cropping out the legends. Someday, perhaps you will discover that the reverses of Roman coins are interesting, too, and you might want to assemble a set paying attention to the historical ties shown there. You might question the places you showed the same person twice and how you applied terms like co-emperor and usurper. There is no complete and standard list on all of these matters and it is your poster. There are even times and places where different parts of the Roman world applied different status to the same man. Do you need to show the FILius AVGustorum coins of Constantine and Maximinus? I have seen the opinion posted here that usurpers are not to be included but it seems that a successful usurper gets elevated at some point. Magnentius was labeled 'usurper' but controlled a large part of the Empire longer than some separatists. You saw no use for Decentius but included Tetricus Junior? There are no the British separatists (Carausius and Allectus)? Most interesting is your inclusion of Severina but no other woman. I am aware of the reasoning here but point out that that is not a universally accepted 'fact'. My point here is you will need to decide who gets included and how they are represented. You know there are people who might belong on a complete list but that you will never have because their coins are so rare or even no existent. Since you can never have them all, you are free to choose whom and how you form the list. Enjoy the process. Don't worry about the details. If I made such a gang photo, it might have to be titled, 'Guys I Liked Enough to Buy Their Coin'. It is OK to change the way you collect along the way. Many start wanting one coin per ruler but most leave that when they decide that some are just not going to happen but other rulers have a thousand coins of interest. When you can't have them all, you are free to pick using your rules. Enjoy.

 

Good luck. As you collect more and more, availability gets exponentially more difficult, and prices get exponentially higher.

I’d rather spend my efforts on my real interest in the Roman Republic, its history, and the States, Cities, and Empires that interacted with them.

I do not collect them, but somehow acquired them as I collected my focus of coins. I keep them in an album, and show them to my Grandkids to illustrate a timeline of history.

I have 151 different Emperors, Empresses, Usurpers. Yeah, and multiples of several of them.

 

not so bad, many historians report that Ulpia Severina ruled alone after the death of Aurelianus and the reign of Tacitus. An empress with full power.

 

@dougsmit Thanks for taking your time making such a detailed commentary. To be honest the british separatist state under Carausius and Allectus is excludet because I ran out of space and dont own one of those yet (But it is not forgotten ).
There are a bunch of very rare usurpers I didnt put on this for the same reason like Clodius Macer, Quietus, Julian (of pannonia) etc. but I would say that the most important usurpers are mostly represented.
I was thinking about adding the Filius Augustorum period of Constantine and Maximinus but I just summarized that time into the civil war you see here because it was such a short interrim till both of them just declared themselfes Augustus and it just would make the "poster" more chaotic to include every titlechanging.
Last thing I would like to explain is that this is just a summary of my progress in collecting coins by emperor and doesnt mean that I'am only interested in the emperors and not the reverses or their legends. The cropping was simply made to highlight the emperors portraits.

 

Nice goal. My goal is similar except I have to rule out the very rare usurpers where there only are a few known examples, which don't often come up for sale and if they do command exorbitant prices...Regalianus, Jotapianus, etc. I do have some of the rarer typical emperors and usurpers such as Macrianus and Quietus, still looking for Gordian I and II at the moment.

 

Welcome to the board!
Great effort on your poster, i really like your division in dynasties.
Good luck on filling in the blancs. Its a difficult, perhaps impossible job to get a coin of each caesar, emperor, usurper and rule of some break away part of the empire. Like others mentioned, if you're not a billionair, zo at some point will have to make some choices.
And collecting is personal, so you set your own goals, despite what anyone tells you. I focus on late republic/imperatorial and imperial up to and including several dynasty. But I do also have a few coins of constantine, and even two of the soldier emperors. And also one Greek... ok, never mind the focus....

 

Took me five years but I managed a complete set of Emperors in Sestertius format (just missing a handful of ultra rare empresses):

 

Impressive @Julius Germanicus

 

Now you have to repeat that incredible feat in QUINARII !