I've seen coins labeled as RIC I-XI..I think this is from a certain time era.. but I've also seen "RIC 80", "RIC 154", etc.. what do those mean?
RIC is the "Roman Imperial Coinage" aka the reference book for roman empire coins. Constisting in ten big volumes, not written by the same persons, thus having slightly different systems of referencing the coins Q
Roman Imperial Coinage? "RIC" refers to the ID numbering system in a catalog of Roman coins which appears to be as well known within the ancients collecting community as "Krause" is in the world collecting community. Often neither term is specifically defined. Looks like I guessed right, just didn't type fast enough.
Like others have said, RIC stands for Roman Imperial Coinage. It was started in the 1920's and was not finished until the 1980's I believe. Since much of it is so old, they are systematically redoing the volumes. Of the original ten, Volume one has already been revamped, (about 1983 I believe), and the first part of volume 2, (labelled 2.1) was printed last year. The reason I mention this is to be aware if you buy the old volume 1 it is NOT the RIC number that people will refer to now. To look up a coin, you would have to know the RIC volume that deals with that Emperor, then look for the number listed. As for cost, they can range from a low of $75 to a high of $210 per volume. Sometimes you can get a little better used price than that. A complete set used would go for about $1400 as a pretty good price. Right now a "complete" set would include the second edition of Volume one, but not volume 2.1 unless stated.
I agree with Medoraman and add that if you had bought a set for $1000 when I reviewed it in 1998 you could get a profit selling it today. Various authors, The Roman Imperial Coinage, Spink, various dates This work is a set of ten HUGE volumes. Covering the span of the Roman Empire from the beginning to 491 AD, 'RIC' attempts to list every coin known to the authors. Each of the volumes was written by the leading experts in the field. Dating from the 1920's to the recent (1994) release of Vol. X there is quite a variety of styles and approaches to the subject. Photographic quality is, at best, not consistent and certainly nowhere near the level of the scholarship that went into the text. Since the work discusses types rather than individual specimens the is no data on weight and diameter of the examples. Beyond the catalog of types, excellent introductions to each reign discuss many details of the coinage. Useful indices of types and legends are provided. The books are not easy to use for beginners. Being able to locate a coin in the catalog requires you already know the subject pretty well. Each author organized the material in a slightly different fashion so the user has to learn a new system when moving from volume to volume. Most volumes were divided by mint and then by date within the mint. Successful use of the books takes practice but if you have spent over $1000 for a set of the books you should not mind a little work to access all that information. Some information is dated and made incomplete by new finds in the age of the metal detector. My particular specialty, the Eastern mint denarii of Septimius Severus, is covered poorly. Other areas fare better. I regret the decision to include in these books a rarity scale listing how many of each coin was found in a select sample of major collections. Dealers and collectors tend to misread these rarity scales and fail to realize that there are a few million ancient coins not contained in the collections recorded so many of the very rare listed items are barely scarce. RIC is not for everyone. Some collectors may want the volume that covers the period of their specialty; 'advanced' collectors and dealers will buy the set. Beginners should spend the money on other books. Vol. I was recently revised and Vol. X is new. The others need updating. Particularly in need of help is the scarce Vol. V which sells used for more than it is worth. Recent reprints have made the set accessable This is a great resource with vast amounts of information but the books must be used critically and with the realization that the information is imperfect in places . I posted the following note on Numism-L in response to a question on RIC: "RIC is a set of 10 volumes written over a span of many years by a number of different authors who had in common that they were among the leading scholars in their field and were willing to undertake a huge task. One suspects that some of them never read the volumes that came before or they were so set in their ideas of how the material should be presented that they did it 'their way' despite any confusion they would cause to people who had used the earlier volumes. Some of them were not consistant even within a volume. Eastern denarii of Elagabalus were separated by mint into a section of their own but the parallel coins of Julia Maesa from Rome and the East were lumped together in one list." "When most coins bore mint marks (Vol VI-IX) it made sense to list coins by the mint in order by date within the mint. As a result the RIC number for a coin struck at London for Constantine would be many pages from an almost identical coin struck in the same year at Alexandria. The scholarship in sequencing all the minor differences into issues was massive and the result is very useful to the advanced collector. To the beginner with a few poor condition or partly illegible coins, RIC is worse than useless. If you can not read the mintmark on a coin and are not advanced enough to recognize the style, trying to find a coin in RIC is nearly impossible. For collectors who just want a coin of Constantine showing Sol, the mint mark and RIC number are wholly irrelevant. " "For a reason I'll never understand, Sear decided to list the mint mark on his example coins and quoted the RIC number for that exact variety. By doing this he confused his target audience (beginners) with information that needed more than a little explanation. Cohen dodged the subject by not listing mint marks and made his work much easier to understand (unless being in French is a problem)." "New collectors who come to ancients from collecting US machine made coins often bring expectations of collecting by sets with each coin fitting into a hole in their Whitman folder. It simply does not work that way. There are so many differences in ancient coins one from another that the 'complete listings' like RIC have to make choices on where to draw the line as to what gets another number and what number it will be. Some volumes list a coin that was issued for more than one ruler together so 1 can be a coin of Constantine while 2 is Licinius. Similarly, a bit later in the series, 1a is Valentinian while 1b is Valens with the same reverse and minor devices. Earlier the same denarius issued at the same mint for Septimius Severus and Julia Domna could be 347 and 608. It should be mentioned that the numbering started over for each mint in the Constantinian period. Therefore, there are several coins numbered '1' and if you are not given either the page number or the mint name the RIC number alone is not a great deal of help. A set of RIC requires spending $1000 and making a commitment to spend the time necessary to learn how to use all that information. 1000 hours hard work should get you started on a volume or two." "From all this you might think I am discouraging the purchase of RIC. Not at all. The books themselves are probably better investments than any $1000 worth of coins but only if you read them, understand them and critique them for their shortcomings. Of course, if you wrap them in plastic and never open them you will sell them for more when your collection goes to market than if you destroy them with daily use. What a waste!"
Now that's sad, in the same league with trading in unopened rolls of coins that might contain key dates/varieties. Sorry guys, I consider that "gambling", not "collecting" (or even "investing"). You sure got that right.
What a crappy thing to say, to dougsmit of all people! I would be my LIFE that he uses his library at least as often as he uses his lungs. But doug's right, a good library is much more valuable than a good coin collection.
I don't think anyone has ever misunderstood one of my posts more thoroughly! My "sad" comment was on the concept of buying the books without any intention of using them, which dougsmit himself called "a waste". I was agreeing with him (see the second half of my post), not criticizing him.
