Crawford RRC 2019 Reprint (?)

That's fantastic news. I'm really glad I ordered one. I got notice from Amazon that mine shipped out today.

$97 for mine w/shipping sure beats $1000 any day. That's for sure.

 

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Thanks for reviewing this Andrew. This definitely settles and doubt I had. The plates and text both look great, better than the previous copy I had. Can't wait to get mine in.

 

I've been refreshing my Amazon page like crazy since yesterday. My package left Illinois tonight. Hopefully it's on a plane for Florida. I haven't been this excited about a book since I managed to get my hands on Roman Silver Coins Third Edition, Volume III. If you know the third edition, you know Volume III is the show stopper that can prevent you from completing the set.

 

Does this newest RRC reprint reproduce the text of the original 1974 edition or the revised text from the later reprints? Thanks!

 

Revised text. But the revisions are trivially minor, from those I have noted. Corrections to text or attribution errors. Occasionally I have noted something in 1974 and thought "that's a typo or transliteration error". And see it's fixed in later editions. There are no numismatic improvements, just corrections to editorial errors that Crawford knew were wrong when he reviewed the printing of the first edition.

For real revisions to RRC see notes made in the appendices of Coins and Money under the Roman Economy, 1985. These address a few content errors.

In the forward matter, it notes that the last hardback edition was 2017. That was the one priced at £400 or £450 I recall. And that there were 12 hardback reprintings. So the book has never been out of print - once the publisher runs out of copies, within a year more are printed. But £65 and £450 make a big difference to demand.

 

I really dislike cardcovers or softbound books. For those of who use these references on a very regular basis it means they frequently fall apart. Sadly I make do with them when necessary (as in the case of RRC).

 

For UK members it is worth looking at Blackwells who have this book at £61.64 with free shipping. I have ordered my copy.

 

I totally agree! I always try and obtain a hardback edition of any book when possible, especially a reference I'll be consulting frequently! Sadly, Coinage and Finances in the Reign of Domitian is available only as a cardcover.

 

You can always have them bound. If you order in bulk and only care about utility it isn’t terribly expensive.

 

I just got my copy of this reprint in. As has already been mentioned, the plates are overall better than I expected and I was pleasantly surprised though a few are noticeably lighter than average, in particular XVIII. The text however seems to have been nearly perfectly reproduced. I spent a good bit of time flipping through each volume looking for any problems with the how the text was scanned or printed and it is very crisp and well printed throughout. The paperback binding also seems to be of reasonably high quality. My previous copy was an old hardback reprint with completely failing binding so I'll be interested to see how this reprint holds up in that regard.

I'm overall very impressed with Cambridge for offering RRC in this format at this price point and I can recommend it to other collectors without reservation. I've previously recommended Sear as a good beginner's handbook for these types for collectors for whom RRC was too large an outlay but given how affordable this paperback set is, I'd recommend just going straight for RRC.

Below I've attached a couple of pictures showing the average quality of the text and plates. The darker area in the second picture is just a shadow and not anything on the page itself

 

Just got my copy in the mail today...

 

Got mine today as well. Ordered it on May 14th, shipped the next day. I was a little worried, the package reeked of scented soap. I was worried the smell got into the paper, but was happy the shrink-wrapping saved it.

 

I received a bright orange shrink-wrapped set today - everything as expected. I put it to use as illustrated below (440/1) - Q.SICINIUS IIIVIR 49 BC. with symbols of felicitas and victory on the reverse and Fortuna Populi Romani (FORT P R) on the obverse alluding to the hopes of the Republican faction at the beginning of the civil war - with [129] obv. dies reported in the table on p.659