Need Suggestions: If You Had To Do It All Over Again

Sometime if you have an opportunity, I'd like to see a group picture of your Hadrian travel series (maybe a new thread).

 

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If it had it to do again I would probably do things in much the same way. Before collecting I was interested in the era of the 12 Caesars. I am still interested in this area of collecting so I would probably build the set again.

I have also been interested in history and in the people that made things interesting. So I would not change my current focus of collecting historical figures on coins through the ages.

I would change one thing. Though I have had fun picking up a few cheaper coins, I would probably avoid this by trying to get better examples first without having to upgrade later. Come to think of it, I would probably still upgrade coins later anyway as interesting coins pop up for sale. My goal remains to acquire the best I can afford rather than the most number of coins. I am once again down to near 30 coins total in my collection. I would be very surprised if I passed 45 coins this year.

 

I probably wouldn't do any different. If my collection disappeared for some reason and I had to start again, I just wouldn't buy uncleaned lots. It was great fun at first and it taught me a lot. I just buy what attracts me.

 

I like my style, only in the past i had brought some fake coins. Iff i could turn that back i was happy!

 

It would be my pleasure. I will have to take the pictures and get it started. Maybe tonight or tomorrow. I would love to see others coins in the series too. Mine are just the denarius with the personification of the region, not all the restoration coins and such.

 

I'm with Steve. There is a big difference between buying any and everything and buying coins that speak to you. Along the way I have traveled some specialties more than others and have 500 denarii of Septimius and Julia to show for it. I do not regret having them but I might have been a little more selective in the 1990's when I was really hotter for them than I am now. My web page started in February 1997 (that will be 20 years for those not good with numbers) drove me to buy coins I 'needed' because I wanted to do a page on something that was not Septimius Severus.

Sometime in 2015, I bought a coin that doubled the size of my collection on the date I started the pages. I don't have exact statistics but I do know that the recent half of my collection is much, much better balanced over time and place that the Roman/Severan heavy first half. I am proud to be a general collector of ancient coins and a very minor dabbler in medievals. I like my Severans, my Republicans, my Hadrians, my Provincials, my Greeks.....my coins that spoke to me and were not required because they were lacking from a set. IMHO, sets are for those filling up their Whitman blue boards. I buy coins that I like at prices I can afford. There is no possible album with holes to fit what I might buy.

 

Even though it's all over the map and often contradictory, everyone's advice has been very helpful and much appreciated. It's given me a lot to ponder.

One thing I've realized through this discussion is that even though I'm collecting ancient coins, I've still been approaching collecting with a U.S. coin mentality, that is, trying to get one example of each. That, of course, makes no sense with ancients because every ancient coin is unique. I took the same approach with my emperor collection, and now I'm down to needing just a small handful of emperors that cost hundreds of dollars apiece. So I need to snap out of this idea of "one of each," this idea of assembling a complete set of something. I suppose there are a few exceptions, like a 12 emperors set or the Hadrian travel series, but for the most part there is no such thing as a "complete set" with ancients.

 

Well done!!! Beautiful interactive sites!!!

 

I am the Greek-American that introduced myself to you at a meeting Saturday morning. I meant to ask whether you were still collecting coins, and now you've answered my unasked question. Whether the "good" fakes are worth the price of genuine coins depends, in part, on what you can learn from studying them in hand and what you intend to do with that information. If you intend to publish diagnostic advice in some form, the high cost may pay dividends to the universe of collectors that will learn from your study (as we've learned from your catalogues). If you are simply building a black cabinet as a collecting endeavor, then my advice would be to keep the collection small or focus on the library instead !

 

Many of us change collecting focus over time as our interests evolve. Personally, I think specialty is a good thing, as it adds depth and value to your knowledge and sometimes (not always) your collection. As a teenager, I began collecting Roman Imperial coins in a general, unspecialized manner. That broad collecting focus continued for decades.

Gradually, I started buying mainland Greek coins and English hammered coins. Those two experiments were short-lived. I remain passively interested in Greek coins and have kept my small collection, but I lost interst in English hammered coins and sold that collection last year.

A third experiment was to buy a representative sample of Roman Republican coins to add developmental context to my Roman Imperial collection. That limited intention has resulted in a wholesale shift of my collecting focus to Roman Republican coins. In effect, I have restarted collecting from scratch with a renewed focus and vigor. What interests me most about the Republican coinage is that the full evolution of coinage from crude, weighed bronze to Imperatorial propaganda can be collected in a series spanning a mere 300 years. In acquiring Roman Republican coins, I've also focused on provenanced or provenancable coins. Middle market Roman Republican coins are remarkably easy to provenance, likely because the Republic issued few gold coins and largely formulaic bronze coins. Old auction catalogues are full of Republican denarii and bronzes that are still affordable today vs. the aurei and high-value sestertii you'll find in the Imperial sections of those catalogues. I'm now considering selling most of my Roman Imperial collection to continue this pursuit.

My advice: if the Constantinian coins are becoming too difficult to collect or too expensive, try experimenting with some other areas that interest you. One such experiment may stick, as in my case.

 

I wrestled with this question recently when I decided to get a bit more serious about collecting ancients. I decided to start multiple collections at once with pretty attainable goals for each one that can be expanded over time. This way if I get burned out on collecting one theme I can shift to one of the others. I think this will also make me less likely to overspend on a specific coin just to fill a hole my collection.

If it were me I'm not sure I would be able to sell my collection to start again. I like all my first coins too much

 

Even with a 12 Caesars collection there is no such thing as complete...at least in my mind. Yes you may have all of the emperors, but that is only a starting point. There is much variety to be had. Do you want only silver denarii? Would you allow provincial issues? What about the women who were related to the 12? Do you want only Rome mint issues? How about that gap between Iulius Caesar and Augustus? Now that would be an interesting collection. The collection can be as general or specific as you want. Then there is always the possibility of upgrading the member coins for issues with interesting reverses or trying to find examples with countermarks.

A 12 Caesars collection may be complete at some time, but in my mind it is never finished unlike filling the holes in a folder. My pursuit of the 12 is in no way a search for an ultimate end, it is instead about finding as interesting a path as possible when investigating an historically fascinating time in the story of human beings.

 

One thing I always recommend for getting the views of more experienced collectors on collecting itself is to read some of the introductions and essays in big auction catalogs, as well as the notes in the catalogs themselves. There are some great ones in more recent catalogs like "Upon Relinquishing the Pursuit" by RBW in the intro to NAC 61 and "Paean to a Coin Collector" by Roberto Russo in the foreword to BCD Lokris Phokris. There are many such interesting discussions in auction catalogues, especially larger specialized collections but these are the first two that come to mind.

 

Agree. The introduction to the 1950 Glendining Catalogue of the Henry P. Hall Collection is also interesting..

 

If your talking about ancient collecting, I wouldn't have changed much. Maybe my first ancient purchase? The coins I got are not the best quality, but now that I have learned. My purchases have been a lot more pickier in quality, I will take my early purchases as a learning curve.

As far as regular coin collecting goes, I would have liked to focused on ancients a bit earlier. Started with modern coins a bit too much. Not saying modern coins are bad or anything as I still collect a bit here and there. I find myself gravitating more towards ancients than modern due to the design and selection.

 

OP, given you like LRB, I woukd suggest getting a copy of Bruck and form a set of reverse variants for LRB. Tons of rarities to be found at common coin prices for specialists.

If not, browse something like CNG. We cannot tell you what will trip your trigger. Tons of stuff I collect most here would turn their noses up against. Collecting is a personal thing, it is what appeals to you.

 

If I had it to do over again? I'd have stayed single, traveled the country, and lived out of my pickup truck.......but Walter Mitty is just a fantasy.

 

Oh dear......you guys is talkin' 'ancients'.......never mind.

 

I don't think there's anything wrong with a "one of each" approach. You just need to define suitably what goes into the "each." I think a set of Constantinian bronzes would be a worthy collecting goal, and offers a number of interesting jumping off points.

As for the "U.S. coin mentality," not all US collectors want to have an album full of 95 similar looking Morgan dollars or 52 Indian cents, or whatever. I enjoy collecting by type (a different "one of each" type of mentality, to be sure!).

 

But when ya get old like me.......