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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Valentinian, post: 3459283, member: 44316&quot;]I love auction catalogs and loved them even more before the internet made searches so easy and therefore paper catalogs less useful. Recently I have been discarding notes I took took on 5x8 cards in the pre-internet days categorized by emperor (How much did an Aelius denarius cost? I looked it up in my notes giving firm, issue, lot number grade and price, from numerous catalogs. Then I pulled the catalogs from shelves to see the images. It was an extremely slow process, compared to now.) Many of those catalogs have been sold long ago but some I have kept.</p><p><br /></p><p>I agree with the previous posts that those firms mentioned have excellent catalogs. CNG&#039;s Triton, Roma, and NAC are among the best. I keep all those issues. But catalogs I like the best are ones with a remarkable selection by a true collector who emphasized a particular theme. </p><p><br /></p><p><a href="http://augustuscoins.com/ed/catalogs/Themes.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://augustuscoins.com/ed/catalogs/Themes.html" rel="nofollow">http://augustuscoins.com/ed/catalogs/Themes.html</a></p><p><br /></p><p>I figure they have really good examples and if I see, say, a Turkoman bronze, and I think I might like it and can research it. If is as good as the ones I see in my catalogs filed in my magazine boxes under &quot;Turkoman bronze,&quot; then I know it is outstanding and worth having. (You can click on &quot;Turkoman bronze&quot; at that link above and see the best pre-internet catalogs I know about.)</p><p><br /></p><p>All the categories on that page have had some catalogs with outstanding collections of them. Those catalogs are worth having as reference works. On the other hand, the typical paper catalog, even one with a large number of beautiful coins of all eras, gives me no reason to save it unless I can identify something special that will cause me to want to consult it when I am studying something. </p><p><br /></p><p>For example, if you want to collect <b>river gods</b> on coins, you must obtain</p><p><b>Helios</b> <b>3 </b> (2009, April 29-30) 782 ancients among 1113. 7 Celtic, 1 RR imit, 60 G, 10 RR, 204 RI, 17 Byz, 2 Gepids, and an amazing collection of 482 Roman and Roman provincials with river gods.</p><p>&nbsp;<b>An amazing collection of river gods on Roman and Roman provincial coins (482)</b></p><p><br /></p><p>It is not surprising I am unaware of any other catalog remotely approaching that representation. </p><p><br /></p><p>Catalogs have only a small fraction of the value they used to have (both value in dollars and value in terms of hard-to-obtain information). But some of them can show you what a theme collection looks like and those are enjoyable and still worthwhile.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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