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<p>[QUOTE="rasiel, post: 1668123, member: 15452"]WOW, I want to say thanks to each of you for taking the time to chime in on this thread. Thanks to Mat too for emailing to keep me on track!</p><p><br /></p><p>I'm actually neutral on Galerius. I don't necessarily have a problem with "boring" coins. The boring aspect is one that makes it more easily inventoried and this to a certain extent describes all of Roman coinage. It's why a comprehensive reference book on Greek coins would be much bigger and a much tougher project to pull off.</p><p><br /></p><p>And I want to particularly thank Doug for his queries and observations. Now, to clarify:</p><p><br /></p><p><i><span style="color: #000000">Tough love time: The main question we each might ask is: "I own ERIC (ERIC II, AORTA or all of them). Do I need ERIC III?" I must say that there is appeal in the rarity system as proposed but its value in a practical sense depends a great deal on the accuracy and completeness of the data collected. That will mostly depend on which resources are sampled to get the data and how they are ranked. Will it find a way to avoid duplications from one coin being listed a half dozen times before it finally sells just to be relisted again by the new owner? Will it cover private sales by dealers who do not do business online but have a significant impact on the supply of the highest and lowest priced coins? How will it avoid the 'problem' of RIC ratings where coins become R5 because of a moved dot which is of interest to a fraction of a percent of buyers but coins only slightly more common (we have seen five rather than one is 'slightly') codes out to be only R3 but there are a thousand buyers looking for the coin (I saw a Martinian at Baltimore).</span></i></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="color: #000000">I spent months, not kidding, on thinking through how I was going to approach this and I recognized the pitfalls you listed. First of all I made the decision to only consider market rarity as opposed to absolute rarity. This means that rarity should be evaluated based on how easy or difficult it is to acquire a given coin in the understanding that it does little good to a collector to know that a major museum has a collection of 10,000 of some certain coin that no one has ever seen sold. Likewise, collectors fall for RIC R5-rated coins thinking that they really are rare when you can find them listed over and over. My second decision was to consider only coins sold through open, public auctions when determining values while still culling coin data from fixed price sales to determine rarity. You just can't get an accurate sense of prices for even the most common of issues when you mix in auction data and dealer asking prices. On top of that when a dealer posts a coin for sale that price is usually open to haggling and the actual selling price not disclosed.</span></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="color: #000000">Relisted coins are an easier problem to deal with. You just ignore all but the first. This is only really an ebay problem and sellers who customarily "fish" for the best prices by repeatedly listing the same coin over and over again get flagged and removed from the database along with sellers of fakes and other problem dealers. On the other hand, if a coin is bought on, say, a CNG auction and then sold two weeks later on ebay there is no reason not to consider both sales as relevant since, after all, we are gauging the market availability (as opposed to trying to gather a population report).</span></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="color: #000000">The last problem has an elegant solution. You just need two separate tiers. The first tabulates prices and rarities across the reign and is subdivided only by denomination while the second you iterate every sale instance in every single variety. You get the best of both worlds this way; you are able to see at a glance just how rare and costly those Martinians are taken as a whole compared to the coins of another emperor AND you get to see whether even within that rare coinage some slight variation such as the presence or absence of a dot is more or less rare. YES, it is a tremendous amount of work but this is the kind of job I'm cut out for (some days are better than others evidently!)</span></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="color: #000000">I agree in principle with Doug's second thread regarding more info on details. It's a given that a book on coins is a failure if it doesn't teach about coins. But you also have to consider the model. No coin book will meet all needs. And my work on ERIC is no exception. If you want an ERIC-style reference but also as deeply technical as G</span>öbl or Estiot and which also includes the rich bibliography and tables and flowcharting in RIC and the <span style="color: #000000">historical background of Gibbon you really are better off getting all of them separately. It's just not feasible as a commercial project even if I had all the know-how and will. And certainly not least, in my case especially, many times I just don't KNOW the information. For a perfect example, while I know that the terminal CMH monogram is unique to the mint of Nicomedia I have no idea what it actually stands for. </span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000">I'm definitely attempting to address fleshing out more general info on coin details via expanded section introductory notes (see as example on the posted chapter on Constans) but I realize other authors, or myself in some future project, are better prepared to answer more of the "why's and what for's" than my main focus here which continues to be on the "how's and when's".</span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000">Ras</span>[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>
[QUOTE="rasiel, post: 1668123, member: 15452"]WOW, I want to say thanks to each of you for taking the time to chime in on this thread. Thanks to Mat too for emailing to keep me on track! I'm actually neutral on Galerius. I don't necessarily have a problem with "boring" coins. The boring aspect is one that makes it more easily inventoried and this to a certain extent describes all of Roman coinage. It's why a comprehensive reference book on Greek coins would be much bigger and a much tougher project to pull off. And I want to particularly thank Doug for his queries and observations. Now, to clarify: [I][COLOR=#000000]Tough love time: The main question we each might ask is: "I own ERIC (ERIC II, AORTA or all of them). Do I need ERIC III?" I must say that there is appeal in the rarity system as proposed but its value in a practical sense depends a great deal on the accuracy and completeness of the data collected. That will mostly depend on which resources are sampled to get the data and how they are ranked. Will it find a way to avoid duplications from one coin being listed a half dozen times before it finally sells just to be relisted again by the new owner? Will it cover private sales by dealers who do not do business online but have a significant impact on the supply of the highest and lowest priced coins? How will it avoid the 'problem' of RIC ratings where coins become R5 because of a moved dot which is of interest to a fraction of a percent of buyers but coins only slightly more common (we have seen five rather than one is 'slightly') codes out to be only R3 but there are a thousand buyers looking for the coin (I saw a Martinian at Baltimore).[/COLOR][/I] [COLOR=#000000]I spent months, not kidding, on thinking through how I was going to approach this and I recognized the pitfalls you listed. First of all I made the decision to only consider market rarity as opposed to absolute rarity. This means that rarity should be evaluated based on how easy or difficult it is to acquire a given coin in the understanding that it does little good to a collector to know that a major museum has a collection of 10,000 of some certain coin that no one has ever seen sold. Likewise, collectors fall for RIC R5-rated coins thinking that they really are rare when you can find them listed over and over. My second decision was to consider only coins sold through open, public auctions when determining values while still culling coin data from fixed price sales to determine rarity. You just can't get an accurate sense of prices for even the most common of issues when you mix in auction data and dealer asking prices. On top of that when a dealer posts a coin for sale that price is usually open to haggling and the actual selling price not disclosed.[/COLOR] [COLOR=#000000]Relisted coins are an easier problem to deal with. You just ignore all but the first. This is only really an ebay problem and sellers who customarily "fish" for the best prices by repeatedly listing the same coin over and over again get flagged and removed from the database along with sellers of fakes and other problem dealers. On the other hand, if a coin is bought on, say, a CNG auction and then sold two weeks later on ebay there is no reason not to consider both sales as relevant since, after all, we are gauging the market availability (as opposed to trying to gather a population report).[/COLOR] [COLOR=#000000]The last problem has an elegant solution. You just need two separate tiers. The first tabulates prices and rarities across the reign and is subdivided only by denomination while the second you iterate every sale instance in every single variety. You get the best of both worlds this way; you are able to see at a glance just how rare and costly those Martinians are taken as a whole compared to the coins of another emperor AND you get to see whether even within that rare coinage some slight variation such as the presence or absence of a dot is more or less rare. YES, it is a tremendous amount of work but this is the kind of job I'm cut out for (some days are better than others evidently!)[/COLOR] [COLOR=#000000]I agree in principle with Doug's second thread regarding more info on details. It's a given that a book on coins is a failure if it doesn't teach about coins. But you also have to consider the model. No coin book will meet all needs. And my work on ERIC is no exception. If you want an ERIC-style reference but also as deeply technical as G[/COLOR]öbl or Estiot and which also includes the rich bibliography and tables and flowcharting in RIC and the [COLOR=#000000]historical background of Gibbon you really are better off getting all of them separately. It's just not feasible as a commercial project even if I had all the know-how and will. And certainly not least, in my case especially, many times I just don't KNOW the information. For a perfect example, while I know that the terminal CMH monogram is unique to the mint of Nicomedia I have no idea what it actually stands for. I'm definitely attempting to address fleshing out more general info on coin details via expanded section introductory notes (see as example on the posted chapter on Constans) but I realize other authors, or myself in some future project, are better prepared to answer more of the "why's and what for's" than my main focus here which continues to be on the "how's and when's". Ras[/COLOR][/QUOTE]
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