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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;dougsmit, post: 4510603, member: 19463&quot;]I really liked David Vagi&#039;s books but he made one decision that hurt sales.&nbsp; Rather than listing a few of the most commonly encountered types, he listed a few premium types and then a generic listing for &#039;others&#039; which turned off people who wanted a number for their coin rather than just some other coin.&nbsp; Using the Trajan example RC mentioned all of my Trajan denarii would be Vagi 1233 also except this one which got its own number 1237 as one of the four special types and a value boost of 3x or so.&nbsp; Trajan has many other neat types that might outrank &quot;someone standing there&quot; but Mr. Vagi chose to spend many column inches listing coins of the Trajan Restoration series instead of coin most people will actually see.&nbsp; I have not met David Vagi but had he been a friend back then I would have asked him to rethink this.&nbsp; Certainly a &#039;complete&#039; listing would have made the book huge and expensive.&nbsp; Authors walk a fine line between too much and too little.&nbsp; When issued, I considered the Vagi prices reasonably close but today they are a mite low.&nbsp; He gives a &#039;fine&#039; Trajan Via like the one below $50-75.&nbsp; I paid $120 in 2014.&nbsp; I might have paid too much but I wanted the &#039;special&#039; type.&nbsp; </p><p>Trajan denarius VIA TRAIANA</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1117827[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>The History volume of the Vagi set will prepare the reader to win any trivia contest of Roman Imperial times.&nbsp; Unfortunately the current fad of education no longer require even the teachers to know details about the emperors as was the fashion in the last century.&nbsp; He does not have chapters on what it was like to be a slave or as woman or any of the current material on social history that replaced names and dates as &#039;history&#039; for education.&nbsp; For coin collectors, the old way is better and the Vagi chapters are great.&nbsp; How may of you can name the emperors and say something pertinent about each one?&nbsp; Did you learn that in college?</p><p>I MUST mention that David Vagi will always hold a special place in my heart and library for being smart enough to include the Anonymous Pagan coins which RIC omitted in error and people who write books by copying RIC failed to note as well.&nbsp;&nbsp; There are only two common ones (below) but he lists a few of the rare ones as well.&nbsp; The only better listing of these is in Failmezger whom I bullied into including my coins far in excess of what he would have felt necessary.</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1117832[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]1117834[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>Van Meter was once IMHO a must have book for beginners (when it was in print) but new ones today are expensive and many used ones are falling apart due to cheap binding.&nbsp; Both Vagi and VanMeter chose to invent a new numbering system and omit proper cross referencing to old standards (copyright problems?).&nbsp; Vagi was well made and used ones should be intact.&nbsp; Van Meter - not so much.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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