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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Roman Collector, post: 3567892, member: 75937&quot;]I&#039;ve been thinking about my collecting tendencies and what sort of philosophy might be extracted from analyzing my tendencies. After musing on this all day, I have discovered an over-arching philosophy behind the whole thing: <i><b>telling a story</b></i>.</p><p><br /></p><p>My tendencies:</p><p>I prefer Roman coins to those of any other ancient culture.</p><p>I prefer coins of the Roman empire to those of the Republic.</p><p>Among coins of the empire, I prefer coins of the principate to the dominate.</p><p>I have several subsets I&#039;m fascinated by: Nerva, the Antonines, Severan women, the barracks emperors, dual-portrait provincials, mythological scenes on provincials, and coins that illustrate ancient minting techniques.</p><p>I like acquiring coins and I&#039;m not too picky about their condition, provided they interest me; I&#039;d rather have ten $50 dollar coins than one $500 coin.</p><p>I make a lot of impulse purchases and I usually don&#039;t regret any of them.</p><p>I buy most of my coins because of what&#039;s on the reverse.</p><p><br /></p><p>Now, in the course of amassing all of these coins, I find that I have a wide variety of themes represented. For example, I have coins depicting nearly every deity in the Greco-Roman pantheon, I have nearly every Roman virtue personified one one coin or other. I have nearly every denomination in silver and bronze. I have coins from every Roman imperial mint and provincials struck in nearly every province of the Roman empire. I have lots of animals and mythological creatures. I have coins with prominent metal flow lines, brockages, fourees, die-clashes, flan chips, cuds and double-struck and counter-marked coins. I have coins depicting most Roman emperors and their wives and children.</p><p><br /></p><p>There&#039;s more to Roman coinage than &quot;Emperor So-and-So succeeded Emperor So-and-So.&quot; There&#039;s more to it than &quot;female figure standing left, holding this, that or the other thing.&quot; These coins tell stories, but not just about military victories and political intrigue.</p><p><br /></p><p>If you were to say, for example, &quot;Tell me about Nemesis,&quot; I could show you all her attributes and avatars. I can demonstrate how flans were cast and smoothed by lathe-turning and struck with hand-engraved, sometimes damaged, dies. I can show you how the same obverse die was used for several different reverse dies at various provincial mints. I can show the family trees of several different imperial families. I can show you all of Faustina II&#039;s hairstyles. I can show you coins depicting ancient sculptures and various temples. I can teach you ancient paleography and clothing styles.</p><p><br /></p><p>I happen to like telling stories about life in ancient Rome -- the gods they worshiped and how they worshiped them, the hairstyles and clothes they wore, the animals they revered, the buildings they created, how they spelled and abbreviated words.</p><p><br /></p><p>For me, <i>&quot;Collecting means assembling a set of coins in which each enhances the significance of the others&quot; </i>means choosing coins that enrich the stories told by the rest of the coins in the collection. Having a large number of lesser-grade, inexpensive coins allows me to do this.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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