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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;DonnaML, post: 8177892, member: 110350&quot;]I agree that OCRE has its problems, and is precisely as outdated as the particular volumes of RIC on which it&#039;s based -- with no attempt made to update the database to incorporate discoveries made since the underlying original volumes of RIC were published (except, of course, where the RIC volume has itself been updated). However, I do find that OCRE is useful nonetheless for at least one purpose, for those of us who don&#039;t own the RIC volumes: when a particular general type has a number of variations or subtypes (particularly in the obverse portrait), to which RIC has assigned different catalog numbers, the written description in OCRE of each variation or subtype, and the number assigned to it by RIC, do make it possible to find the correct catalog number for any given specimen. For example, when I recently purchased my new Hadrian Africa Travel Series denarius, I learned from OCRE that the new edition of RIC II.3 assigns seven different numbers to the type (1494-1500), one for each of the seven different obverse variations. (The old 1926 edition of RIC II, I believe, assigned only one number to the type, RIC 299.)</p><p><br /></p><p>OCRE describes the seven obverse variations as follows (see <a href="http://numismatics.org/ocre/id/ric.2_3(2).hdn.1494-1500" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://numismatics.org/ocre/id/ric.2_3(2).hdn.1494-1500" rel="nofollow">http://numismatics.org/ocre/id/ric.2_3(2).hdn.1494-1500</a>):</p><p><br /></p><p>Obverse</p><p>Legend: HADRIANVS AVG COS III P P</p><p>Portrait: Hadrian</p><p>Type: Head of Hadrian, laureate, right | Head of Hadrian, right | Head of Hadrian, laureate, left | Head of Hadrian, left | Bust of Hadrian, bare chest, traces of drapery on far shoulder usually visible, right | Bust of Hadrian, laureate, draped, right, viewed from rear or side | Bust of Hadrian, draped, right, viewed from rear or side.</p><p><br /></p><p>Thus, I was able to learn from OCRE that my obverse subtype (bare head left) is RIC II.3 Hadrian 1497.</p><p><br /></p><p>Like [USER=31620]@maridvnvm[/USER], however, I&#039;ve learned to ignore the photographic examples illustrating each variant or subtype, both in this case and generally. Perhaps especially for coins in museum collections, the photos&#039; attributions to particular variants are wrong as often as they&#039;re right. Often, they appear as random as throwing a deck of cards in the air and letting them fall where they may. It&#039;s not clear to me whether the attributions (and mistakes) are being made by the museums, by the editors of OCRE, or both. At least for photos in the OCRE versions of the more recently updated&nbsp; volumes of RIC, it would seem more likely that the responsibility lies with OCRE: how would the museums have known to attribute coins to new RIC numbers in volumes that were updated long after those museums cataloged their collections?[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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