Number of roman coins

Everett Guy · Oct 21, 2020

Orielensis said: ↑

That's a list of emperors and empresses, not coin types. If you are asking for the total number of different Roman Imperial coin types, the answer will be much more overwhelming: the comprehensive database "Online Coins of the Roman Empire" (here, basically an online version of RIC, the standard catalogue for Roman Imperial coins) currently has 40786 different entries. I'm sure there are a few additional types they didn't record, and we won't even speak of Roman Republican or provincial coinage.

In a nutshell, no collector has a complete "set" of Roman Imperial coins. The British Museum in London, the Bode Museum in Berlin, the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris, and a couple of similar institutions probably come closest, but even they have significant holes in their collections.

The Littleton list is based on the assumption that collectors will search for one coin per ruler. Many of us in fact do so, but this is far from the only way to collect Roman coins.

Also, the rarity ratings on your list are far from reliable. You can, for example, easily get an attractive Trebonianus Gallus (rated ***) for about $30, while a comparably nice Livia (rated **) can cost you about as much as a used Toyota Prius. Also, while the list of emperors is relatively complete (at least until the very late empire), many of the less well known empresses are missing, e.g. Plotina, Orbiana, Magnia Urbica, etc.
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So are the roman imperal coins all bc coins, these are all before Julius c?

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DonnaML · Oct 21, 2020

Everett Guy said: ↑

So are the roman imperal coins all bc coins, these are all before Julius c?
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All after; the traditional dates are 27 BCE-476 AD. Before Julius were the Roman Republican and Imperatorial coins.

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Number of roman coins

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