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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Orielensis, post: 4670556, member: 96898&quot;]Generally speaking, I don&#039;t think much about &quot;relative values&quot; for different reasons. First of all, this is my hobby and not a job or an investment strategy. It&#039;s okay that it costs money. Secondly, I don&#039;t plan to sell my collection or larger chunks of it, and I hope to never get into a situation where I have to. Finally, the coins I find most appealing don&#039;t necessarily cost a lot of money, and those that do don&#039;t automatically interest me.</p><p><br /></p><p>Yet, there are two small caveats. The first one is space. This came up only in the last two years or so when my collection grew a lot. I don&#039;t want to have more coins than I can store, enjoy, and handle on a regular basis. Therefore, I try to buy few coins that I really like instead of many coins that I only somewhat like. That doesn&#039;t make me a &quot;grade collector,&quot; but I will rather spend my budget on a single nice Republican denarius than on thirty more Constantinian LRBs from Siscia with two soldiers standing watch on the reverse.</p><p><br /></p><p>Secondly, I collect both ancient and medieval coins. There is a relatively large community of ancient coin collectors and a correspondingly sized market. Therefore, it is usually possible to buy popular ancient coins and at some point hand them on to the next collector at not too great a loss. Yet, this is not normally the case with medieval coins, mostly because the community of collectors is much smaller and the market thus less predictable. Hence, I tend to also buy ancients that won&#039;t necessarily stay in my collection forever, knowing it to be possible to find a new owner. With most medievals, though, I search for coins that I hope to still like in twenty years, even if they cost more than average examples.</p><p><br /></p><p>To illustrate this: the two coins below did cost about the same. The Julius Caesar denarius, on the one hand, is far from perfect, but if I ever wanted to spend a lot of money on a better example, I could easily sell it. Many people want a Caesar denarius. The bracteate, on the other hand, is quite close to a perfect specimen but will still appeal only to few other collectors. If I had bought a lesser coin and afterwards decided to upgrade, I would have encountered trouble when unloading the first one. I tend to take this into consideration when spending more than about $50 on a coin.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1151303[/ATTACH]</p><p><font size="3">Roman Republic, Imperatorial Coinage, Julius Caesar, AR denarius, 49–48 BC, military mint moving with Caesar. Obv: [CA]ESAR; elephant walking r., trampling snake. Rev: priestly implements: culullus, aspergillum, axe, apex. 20mm, 3.70g. Ref: RRC 443/1.</font></p><p><font size="3"><br /></font></p><p><font size="3">[ATTACH=full]1151301[/ATTACH] </font></p><p><font size="3">Archbishopric of Magdeburg, under Albrecht von Käfernburg, bracteate penny, ca. 1220–1232. Obv: OICI – IVSDV; St. Maurice, nimbate and wearing armour, standing facing, holding cross and lance flag; below, church building with two towers an an arch; inside, cranium relic. Rev: negative design (bracteate). 23mm, 0.68g. Ref: Berger 1586; Slg. Hauswaldt 167; Slg. Bonhoff 712.</font>[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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