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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Finn235, post: 3631456, member: 98035&quot;]I personally wouldn&#039;t recommend getting your feet wet with the 12 Caesars, especially not in high grade. That&#039;s about like saying &quot;I want to collect US coins. I&#039;m going to start with early dollars.&quot;</p><p><br /></p><p>As a newbie, you don&#039;t know what is or isn&#039;t a good or even a fair deal. If you are buying the Twelve in silver or especially gold, a full set in presentable condition will run somewhere between &quot;new car&quot; and &quot;new house&quot; money. The mark up on some of the tougher pieces (Caligula and Claudius in silver, anything Otho, and especially Caesar&#039;s lifetime portrait issues) is substantial - the OP Caesar Aureus sold for $10k on Great Collections, but maybe it would sell for $20k on Vcoins, or $6k on CNG. The ancients market really is that volatile. Even if a few grand is chump change for you, it is always a good idea to research, haggle, and know when to stay your hand and let an auction go.</p><p><br /></p><p>A few general observations about the &quot;12 Caesars&quot; set:</p><p>1) It omits many very important people who exist on coinage and are collectable. Most notably, Mark Antony, Brutus, Pompey (Sr and Jr), Lepidus, Agrippa, Livia, Germanicus, Britannacus, Agrippina Jr., Julia Titi, and I could go on. </p><p>2) The popularity of the set really inflates the prices of many coins that would otherwise be considered scarce or common. Caligula and Claudius denarii aren&#039;t really *all* that rare, yet they typically enjoy four figure prices while other, much more rare emperors get overlooked because they aren&#039;t in &quot;The Twelve&quot;</p><p>3) Considering that Suetonius was active during the reigns of Trajan and Hadrian, it really doesn&#039;t make any sense why he stopped at Domitian? Honestly, for anyone who really wants to assemble the Twelve really ought to just pony up and complete up through Commodus. The Nerva-Antonine emperors are more famous, more accomplished, generally better human beings, and you can buy a top grade denarius of each of them for the price of a single XF Otho.</p><p><br /></p><p>All that said, what sort of budget are you looking at for the set? Many of us are experienced enough that we could probably give some good pointers. There are sub-$1,000 12 Caesars collections, and of course there are the fat cats who spend five figures for an aureus of each one. There is no right or wrong way to collect ancients.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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