Strategies and Specialties

One of the best and most enjoyable things about collecting Roman coins is settling on a specialty for your collection and a strategy for achieving it. There are, in the macro-sense, two broad ways to build a collection - purchase uncleaned lots, or purchase individual coins. Of course, the two are not mutually exclusive, and both are immensely rewarding - but in different ways. If your passion and pleasure is to clean and attribute dirty coins, sometimes encrusted in over 1,500 years of dirt, then uncleaned coins are for you. The overwhelming odds are, however, that you'll never amass a high-grade collection that way. Uncleaned lots usually consist of lower-grade coins of the Constantinian Era (more on that in a subsequent post.) If you want a really nice, beautiful collection that will impress even your non-nerdy, non-numismatic friends and relatives, then you must purchase individual coins from a reputable dealer.

The latter, for the most part, is my collecting "strategy." There are no coin dealers or antique shops in my immediate vicinity, so I buy from reputable Internet dealers, almost exclusively through Vcoins. Coin shows are great places to pick up really cheap, lower-grade coins and sometimes you can make some interesting finds, like this antoninianus of Volusian in a $3 pick-bin:

As you can see, the coin is badly worn, it almost looks as if it was damaged during cleaning. Both the obverse and reverses are difficult to make out; the reverse nearly impossible to me. I believe the coin is RIC 188, which is a silver antoninianus, with a radiate portrait of Volusian facing right and reads IMP CAES C VIB VOLUSIANO AVG. The reverse, I'm pretty sure, is Apollo standing left, holding a branch and a lyre, and reads APOLL SALVTARI. Volusian was both Caesar and Augustus, during his father Trebonianus Gallus's reign between 251-253 AD, raised to the latter rank as co-emperor after Hostilian died.

Rarely, though, would I buy from a dealer at a coin show. First off, higher-grade individual coins offered by dealers at coin shows are generally grossly overpriced compared to what you can get a comparable coin from a "one price" Internet store. The reason is that coin show dealers are more than happy to bargain with you. They know the market way better than an individual collector like myself could know it. If a sucker is willing to pay the grossly inflated "sticker price," all the better, but dealers, in my experience, artificially jack up the price precisely for those who attempt to haggle. The dealers know how much they paid for the coin, and having haggled countless times before, they know how much they can get out of you virtually as soon as you start talking. It's safer, in my opinion to stick to reputable Internet dealers who offer coins at a "one price" store.

Ask any collector, boiling down a collection to a single specialty is tough. I've been unable to do it so far. I know I like collecting silver denarii with really nice portraits of emperors famed for their military prowess. Narrowing further, I like those silver denarii with really nice portraits of military emperors to come with attractive military-themed reverses, such as legionary standards, captives, or the various "capta" series. However, as I reveal more of my collection, you'll see that this has been a difficult area to restrict myself to. That's because I also buy according to what really makes a powerful emotional impression on me. Ancient coin collecting, indeed all of numismatics, is an intensely personal experience and sometimes what strikes me at the moment as a really historical and worthy piece of art has nothing whatsoever to do with military themes.

That said, I've also joined the ranks of the many Roman coin collectors who have set the almost unreachable goal of obtaining at least one coin from every canonical Augustus (emperor) and Caesar (junior emperor). I've expanded this impossible goal to, in addition, acquiring a coin from anyone who controlled a mint and issues coinage in the Roman Empire. Thus, that means guys like Clodius Albinus, Pescennius Niger, Babinus and Pupienus, not to mention Galba, Otho and Vitellius. Some of these coins are way out of my budget, but it gives me some bargains to hunt for, which is a very important aspect of the hobby.

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